Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
Courtesy of Companion
Companion Café & Baking is closing its Maryland Heights café in order to increase wholesale bread and bakery production. Josh and Jodi Allen, the brother-and-sister team who founded Companion Café & Baking almost 30 years ago, made the announcement this afternoon on Facebook.
“We will be renovating and converting the current café space into an expanded bakery production facility to meet the demands of the rapidly growing manufacturing side of our business,” the post read in part.
Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
The 42,000-square-foot building originally included all of Companion's bread baking operations, a private event space, a teaching kitchen, and a 60-seat café open for breakfast and lunch. By closing the café, Allen can reclaim 5,000-square-feet, or 12 percent of the building’s total. “Adding on space or finding new space takes time; construction takes time,” Allen says. “The smartest move for us was to recapture that space.”
One of the café’s distinguishing characteristics was the wall of windows that showed the inner workings of the baking facility. “We really enjoyed being able to show public the baking process and the literal transparency of it all,” Allen says, “and we loved that relationship. But in the end, we have to maximize growth.”
Courtesy of Companion
Allen says the wholesale business “is growing rapidly—and in a lot of different directions.” In addition to increased orders due to the expansion of regional restaurants, Companion sells frozen bread and pastry to grocery distributors in the Midwest and beyond, some of it private-labeled, some of it Companion-branded. Opportunities to work with such grocers as Fresh Thyme and smaller regional grocery chains are continuing to present themselves as well through those distributors, Allen adds: “But that only continues if we get bread out the door. We have to make sure we can keep doing that.”
In addition, the Facebook post noted that the Maryland Heights café staff will be offered jobs with the company. All reward points earned at the Maryland Heights cafe will transfer to the Ladue location. Catering and online ordering services will also be based at the Ladue café.
“Ladue has been a wonderfully supportive community that helped us to stay open for the last few years,” says Allen.”That’s not going to change at all. My sister does a great job there. We were able to maintain almost all of our staff through the pandemic. As long as I stay away," he quips, "they keep growing.”
