Member Spotlight: Vashon Island Baking Company—a bakery for the community

Member Spotlight: Vashon Island Baking Company—a bakery for the community By Iain Woessner

Vashon Island lies off the coast of Seattle, and the only way to access this idyllic island is by ferry. Secluded in this way, Vashon holds many hidden treasures—not the least of which is the sixyear-old Vashon Island Baking Company, a delectable bakery that serves visitors and community members alike the best hand-crafted baked goods around.

“We’re a bakery in a very small community and we try to be the bakery that folks go to for their birthday cakes, for their breakfast pastries,” Samantha Weigand, owner/pastry chef of Vashon Island Baking Co said. “We have a lot of croissants on the menu. Everything is handmade, in-house…we don’t outsource our dough.”

Weigand came up in the hospitality industry. Her experience taught her just how important the human-element of the industry is.

“I love the people I work with, because it’s really about people. They ask me all the time ‘oh, you own a bakery, you love to bake’ and I say ‘so little of my time is baking and so much of my time is working with employees’,” Weigand said. “So to be able to be an employer in a small community and to have people live and work in the place where we are is really important to me.”

Vashon Island Baking Company bills itself as the only place on Vashon where customers can get both handcrafted pastries and island-roasted coffee, and the menu features a rotating selection of sweet and savory croissants. Additionally, it serves up birthday cakes, pies, cupcakes, cookies and seasonal chocolates -- with gluten-free and vegan options available. It works with other dietary restrictions as well, provided they are given at least 48 hours advance notice to accommodate.

For the island of Vashon, whose community is unincorporated, it has come to pass that the businesses in the area really tend to take the reins when it comes to leading the community.

“We’re unincorporated. There’s no town here—a lot of our identity as a community is based on our connection to the businesses, where we get our coffee, where we get our pastries, where we eat dinner … it’s all part of our town,” James Marsh, executive director of the Vashon Island Chamber of Commerce, said. “A lot of what’s done in the community is based on the businesses deciding things like ‘we’d like to have a holiday Winterfest tree …They help define a lot of the things that make Vashon unique and make it an interesting place to live.’”

Regarding the baking

company in particular, Marsh said Weigand had purchased what had once been an existing bakery, and reinvented that spot in her own image.

“She took some of the favorites (from the previous bakery) and kept that going,” Marsh said. “When she moved in, she made sure to get local artisans making the furniture, using local coffee roasters, she really did a lot to work with local businesses.”

Having sharpened her skills in the hospitality industry, Weigand said she’s had several role models and mentors over the years.

“I’ve had several pastry role models, several chefs that inspired me such as Mark Ramsdell and Roland Mesnier, a couple of business role models,” Weigand recalled. “Liz Davis owned a small creamery in Alexandria, Virginia, and she was my first role-model as a woman-owned business. Before that I worked for a lot of men.”

Reflecting on the differences between male and femaleoperated businesses, Weigand said that it’s important for women coming into the industry to understand the sometimes hard choices that come along with it.

“I think a lot of women in my generation grew up with the idea that we could have it all and that’s not true. Everything is a choice,” Weigand said. “So when I have women coming up, I try to stress that nobody can have it all. We all have to choose based on our priorities, so make sure that it is a conscious choice. I love having flexibility in my schedule because I do have little children and I knew that restaurants were a place where I could have a very flexible schedule.”

In addition to the bakery, Weigand also owns the Glass Bottle Creamery, a local grocery that sells raw milk, eggs, cheese and ice cream. 