Two Fort Fairfield women who first bonded during a kayaking trip are now on a bigger adventure: after starting a bakery in town just last month, they’re already looking to move into a larger space to meet the great demand for their cookies, cinnamon rolls, bread, wraps and other goods.
Heather Prouty and Janice Walsh opened the Rolling Pin Bakery on Dec. 6, marking the latest in a string of small, independent businesses that have sprouted throughout Aroostook County in recent years, including food trucks, coffee shops and other bakeries.
But the Rolling Pin is Fort Fairfield’s only bakery, and demand is so high it will soon expand into a cafe. Their early success has shown how a small business can quickly find a following if its owners have read their market correctly.
“The community has responded really well. We’ve felt the love from day one,” Prouty said. “People are coming in and cheering us on.”
The bakers didn’t really know one another until their kayaking adventure. One day on a whim, Walsh reached out to Prouty, who lived nearby, and asked if she was game for a trip on the water. The outing instantly sparked a friendship, and they discovered they shared a love for baking.
Fort Fairfield had restaurant and convenience store options, but there wasn’t a place for sweet treats. Prouty and Walsh, both introduced to baking by their grandmothers, thought they could fill a niche in this town of about 3,300 residents.
First, they acquired state licenses. Licensing ensures that facilities meet sanitation requirements and allows people to sell their food products, according to the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry. The state has more than 7,500 licensed food producers.
Things happened fast from there. An empty space on Main Street suddenly became available, which meant they had to take the leap or lose the space. They jumped at it.
They had planned a soft opening on Dec. 6, just to test the waters and see how the community responded. On that day, the place filled with people and sweets flew off the shelves, so they rolled with it, Walsh said.
But there were challenges. Their current space doesn’t have a kitchen, so the two spend nights — sometimes into the wee hours — creating and baking. Because they can’t bake and be in the store at the same time, their hours are limited to Thursday through Sunday.
“We want to be open more days and have an on-site kitchen,” Walsh said. “Right now we have a licensed home kitchen that we bake in and bring everything in here. So if we run out of things, we can’t just bake more that day.”
That will change when they move next door into a larger space, opening a cafe that will include breakfast and lunch.
The treats, all made from scratch, are popular, but the public wanted more, Prouty said. They received a lot of feedback about the need for more lunches in town, so they started creating different varieties of simple roast chicken wraps.
Now they’ve added at least one hot option per day as well, like beef stew or American chop suey.
On a recent afternoon, the hot meal was gone and goods on the shelves were dwindling. It’s like that every day, Prouty said.
A customer came in looking for oatmeal bread. Walsh told her the bread had sold out earlier. Another came to explore dessert options and left with a box full.
While the bakers talked, they loaded things into the display cases and assembled boxes.
“We’re always mixing it up,” Prouty said. “We bake how we feel and we’re always inventing new things.”
In the cases, there are cheesecakes and miniature loaf cakes, cupcakes and whoopie pies, wraps and yogurt parfaits. They bake bread and bagels, pastries and cream horns, and more.
Their most popular item is the so-called Oreo Dream Cookie, a giant chocolate cookie topped with white, creamy topping in a swirl pattern, Prouty said.
Cinnamon rolls are also in high demand, but not just any cinnamon rolls. There are combinations such as blueberry and cream cheese, graham crackers and marshmallow, even maple bacon. So far, they’ve sold out nearly every day, Walsh said.
The Rolling Pin is open from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Saturdays and 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Sundays. Daily offerings are posted on its Facebook page.
The bakery also ships all over Maine.
The cafe is probably two or three months away. They’ll add tables and chairs, renovate the space and install a commercial kitchen.
In the meantime, they’re riding the wave of creativity and what both describe as incredible support from their families and the community.
Walsh loves it when people report the goodies didn’t even make it home because people devoured them in their cars, she said.
“I love delicious food and I want everyone to feel that way with our food,” Prouty said. “I don’t want it to be just okay. I want them to feel that it’s special.”
