CAMBRIDGE — Neither Gena nor Dave Levy had lifelong goals of owning their own bakery.
Gena said they fell into it. The couple had been working in fine dining before they took a leap and purchased Bay Country Bakery from Robert and Connie Minn in August 1999.
The pair had just learned Gena was pregnant when they decided to buy the bakery, now a longtime Dorchester establishment.
“The bakery came up for auction at kind of the same time,” Dave said. “We got a little bit of help from our family to buy some equipment and ...”
“... we just started,” Gena said, finishing Dave’s sentence.
“We just went for it,” Dave added.
Twenty-five years later, the couple has found success in their business and been able to grow it, moving to a larger location and adding a cafe. The business is now located on U.S. Route 50 on the east side of Cambridge.
In that time, they’ve been able to take part in something generational. They’ve watched children and grandchildren come in to try the doughnuts that their parents and grandparents grew up on.
“It’s very cool,” Dave said.
When they purchased the bakery, the Levys inherited the beloved doughnut recipe from the previous owners.
“They stayed with us for one week,” Gena said about the Minns. “And I remember thinking, ‘Wow, OK that’s nice.’ And then now I’m like, ‘A week, God, that was like nothing.’”
When the Levys first took over, there were some people in the community who had concerns.
“We were strangers,” said Gena, who grew up in Trappe. “And any local community, they’re like, ‘Who are these people? What are they doing? Are things going to change?’”
The Levys have kept the tried and true doughnut recipe from before their ownership for all these years. But they’ve added some of their childhood favorites to the menu. They use Gena’s grandmother’s peach pie recipe and some of Dave’s grandmother’s Christmas cookie recipes.
“She had Christmas cookies up the wazoo,” Dave said about his grandmother. “She would spend months making Christmas cookies.”
When Gena and Dave met in culinary school, one of the things they bonded over was their strong grandmothers.
“We had similar backgrounds,” said Gena, who noted that they both came from food-oriented families.
Although getting to work at 1:30 or 2:30 a.m. to make baked goods from scratch can be rough, the production team at Bay Country Bakery and Cafe keeps spirits high. Those especially early risers listen to podcasts together in the morning, and as more people trickle in, they switch it over to music.
Taylor Warfield, who has worked in production at the bakery for nine years, starts her workday around 8 a.m., after she’s dropped off her 5-year-old daughter, Luna, at school.
As she formed pie crusts, she said she learned to bake from her grandmother.
“She decorated cakes when I was growing up,” Warfield said. “So I wanted to bake.”
Though owning the bakery can be challenging at times — from dealing with changes in the economy (when they started, a dozen doughnuts cost $4.75 compared to $16 now) to juggling owning a business and raising two children — Gena and Dave like what they do every day.
“I don’t like waking up in the middle of the night and going to bed (early),” Dave said. “I miss a lot of life. I’ve sacrificed a lot in that respect but also gained a lot from it.”
For the Levys, it’s a rewarding job. Dave is reminded of that every time he sells their goods at the farmers market in Salisbury.
“People coming week after week, rain or shine, to stand outside and buy stuff,” he said. “That’s what keeps me going.”
Dave and Gena don’t yet have a plan in place for when they decide to hang up their aprons and retire. They hope they can pass on the business, whether to their children or someone new, like when the Minns sold the bakery to them 25 years ago.
The couple doesn’t know what the next 25 years will bring, but there’s one thing Gena hopes will still be around: “This place,” she said.
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