After becoming vegan, Jen Scheinbach and her husband found themselves drinking their coffee at her local Cup O’ Joe in Clintonville without a access to a local vegan-friendly bakery.
Scheinbach’s craving for a vegan bakery led to the creation of Pattycake Bakery, an award-winning local bakery that caters to coffee shops and walk-in customers, operating under the premise that healthful does not have to mean bland.
“Five-and-a-half years ago, there were not as many options,” Scheinbach said.
Scheinbach, a self-described sweets freak and life-long baker, did what she knew how to do best – started to bake. Initially, she brought her self-created vegan friendly treats with her to potlucks and her daughter’s pre-school gatherings.
“I kept hearing people say ‘you should open a bakery.’ It began to seem like a viable option,” Scheinbach said.
She started small, baking from her house and selling her cookies at the Clintonville Community Market, which had recently lost their supplier of vegan and vegetarian-friendly baked goods.
At the same time, Scheinbach’s dream of selling her treats at Cup O’Joe was coming true.
“I dropped off one tollhouse cookie at the Stauf’s and Cup O’ Joe corporate headquarters with a Post-It note attached telling them to call me if they liked it,” Scheinbach said.
They did, and plans for Pattycake Bakery distribution at local Stauf’s and Cup O’ Joe locations started becoming a reality.
Soon, the demand for Scheinbach’s baked goods, which include chocolate cupcakes and peanut butter chip cookies, was quickly growing.
“I was baking all day long, every day, just 18 cookies at a time. It was from 7 a.m. until 1 a.m.,” Scheinbach said. “It was out of control.”
Now located at 3009 N. High St., Pattycake Bakery features the tollhouse cookies that started it all, along with old-fashioned cake trays filled with oversized chocolate and vanilla cupcakes.
Despite numerous awards and nationally-acclaimed success in magazines such as VegNews Magazine, Pattycake has managed to stay true to its roots, churning out high-quality, low-impact baked goods daily.
“We want to become more and more green,” Scheinbach said. “We are by far the greenest food establishment in Columbus.” She said the business throws away less than one domestic household’s garbage-can worth of trash a week.
Pattycake also delivers their goods to local coffee shops by bicycle and is in the process of changing to completely compost-friendly packaging. They use primarily organic and some local seasonal ingredients in recipes, such as pumpkin-walnut muffins and lemon cupcakes.
With plans for an E-Commerce site in the works, the possibility of a vegan friendly diner and the desire to establish an on-campus presence, Jen Scheinbach and Pattycake Bakery show no signs of slowing down.
Catrina Otonoga can be reached at [email protected].
