Village Baking Co. Bread Store Opens Second Dallas Location

Have you ever soured on your sourdough hobby during this pandemic? Have you tried making croissants? Village Baking Co. has opened its second store in Dallas, and its co-owners are banking on the idea that you’d rather leave the baking to the pros. After all, it takes their bakers 48 hours to make a batch of croissants.

On January 12, the co-owners opened a new Village Baking Co. on Travis Street in Dallas, just steps from the Katy Trail. It’s a Dallas neighborhood that co-founder Clint Cooper says he’s been watching for 15 years.

“There’s a need for a neighborhood bakery, and we’re trying to fill that,” says Cooper. He co-founded the company with his wife, Kim Cooper.

The company operates an existing bakery and cafe, on Lowest Greenville. It is popular with bread connoisseurs and customers come from all over Dallas-Fort Worth to buy their baguettes and croissants.

The shop has a sweet history, which begins with Clint Cooper attending culinary school in San Francisco, then traveling through France “to learn the finer details of French pastry and French bread.” The Coopers opened a bakery in Colleyville in 2004, then moved into making bread wholesale and selling it at farmers’ markets.

Working weekends at farmers’ markets in towns like Coppell, McKinney and others helped the Coopers establish a base of customers who liked fresh bread.

Today, the company’s two restaurants serve a range of French pastries like pains au chocolat (a chocolate croissant), financiers, kouign-amann and bacon-cheddar croissants. The shop also sells croque monsieur and ruben sandwiches as well as quiches.

At the new boutique near Highland Park, customers can dine indoors at two tables or sit outside at one of seven tables. The shops in Greenville and Travis are designed to feel cozy and contained, features that extend to the business plan.

“The idea is to have small store footprints and deliver high-quality bread, consistently,” says Clint Cooper. All bread is made in a Dallas Design District bakery. Centralizing this process makes it easier to replicate a quality product, says co-owner Seth Bame.

Sitting inside the stores, which look like French cafes, customers probably wouldn’t realize that 80% of Village Baking Co.’s business sells bread to large corporations. Village Baking Co. bakers make all of the sliced ​​breads and croissants for 7-Eleven’s 700 stores in Texas. They also supply much of the bread for Hello Fresh, the meal kit delivery service.

“The key idea here is that we put the same detail into the hundreds of thousands of hamburger buns we make each year as we do into a simple croissant, our #1 seller in retail stores,” says Clint Cooper.

Eventually, the business will likely expand to other Dallas neighborhoods, says co-owner Mark Plunkett.

The team signed the lease on Travis Street just over three months ago, intending to offer a take-out product – bread and coffee – at a time when customers are ordering food more than ever. to take away.

“We connected with people and they connected with us,” Bame says. “That’s really what drove us to go to this next place.”

Village Baking Co. is located at 4539 Travis St., Dallas. It opened on January 12, 2021. Food and beverages are available for dinner and takeout.

For more food news, follow Sarah Blaskovich on Twitter at @sblaskovich.