Mrs. Garrett’s Bakery

Nov 27, 2019

Is there really a Mr. Christie? Does the sun shine everyday at Pepperidge Farm? You can’t really trust a wholesome brand these days, can you.

Sometimes you can.

There is a real Mrs. Garrett. Her name is Joyce and she still works in the family bakery that she started 30 years ago, in part of the butcher shop that her husband had opened a few years earlier.

She no longer owns the bakery, which is now a stand-alone business. Her daughter Dawn (Lake) has been with her from the start and owns the business now, and it is as much a family business as it ever was.

“My mother, my aunt, my son and my son-in-law all work here, we like to keep it in the family,” said Dawn Lake on a frosty November morning last week, from the bakery, which is off of the Perth Road (between Inverary and the Loughborough Lake boat launch).

It was warm and bright in the bake shop, however. The pie dough, which had been put up early in the morning, was ready. Fay Legrow was forming circles of dough into butter tart trays, the dough for pies was still on the counter. Joyce Garrett was wrapping some goods that had cooled, and Dillon Lake and Christopher Green were consulting about the rest of the day’s baking list.

A lot of people know about Mrs. Garretts mainly because of the butter tarts, which are sold throughout South Frontenac. They are the most popular item the bakery makes, and they make a lot of them, 300 dozen a week on average, more in the summer and in the holiday seasons like pre-Christmas. That comes pretty close to 200,000 butter tarts a year, each made by hand using home-made dough and filling. The recipe, you guessed it, is a closely guarded family secret.

Mrs. Garrett’s has undergone changes over the last few years. Not only are they making a wider variety of items, but the bakery itself has changed.

“When the butcher shop closed a couple of years ago, we thought about closing up the retail store and moving the bakery somewhere else to just do wholesale. But people kept knocking on the door wanting to come in and buy our baking,” said Dawn Lake.

Early last summer (2018) Dawn decided to listen to the customers and rejuvenate the retail business. Instead of moving, she purchased the property and slowly began to open up more and more of a bakery storefront, and add some new oven capacity.

“We are not done yet, but we are getting more and more traffic into the store as time goes on, and every time we let people know about something new that we are baking, they come here from all over,” she said.

There is also a growing corner in the store with sauces and crafts from local producers. All part of Mrs. Garrett’s becoming a destination store for lovers of local baked goods.

Mrs. Garrett’s butter tarts, and some other items, are available at Ormsbees Mercantile, Trousdale’s Foodland, Leonard’s, Northway Home Hardware and locations in Kingston. A larger selection is available at Glenburnie Grocery, but only at the bakery itself are the full range of goods on display.

Holiday seasons are always busy, of course and each of them is different.

“At Thanksgiving it’s pies, apple pie and pumpkin pie, mostly,” said Dawn.

But the volume can be daunting, especially because pies need to be fresh. That was where the strong staff and capacity of the bake shop kitchen comes in. They made about 700 pies this year, fresh for eating, in two days.

“We’ve done that many for a few years, but now we don’t have to work 16-hour days as much because we have the oven space we need,” she said.

With more capacity comes the opportunity to put out more baked goods, and sales have been increasing continuously.

“We do a lot of different things when it comes around to Christmas, including our own Christmas cake and plum pudding. We also do a lot of trays for customers. There is always a lot for Christmas and as we add new products it is only getting busier and busier. It’s exciting.”

And that’s not a bad situation for a business that is over 30 years old.