By April McIlwaine, Food Hub Operations & Outreach Coordinator

Photo by Daria Bishop for Seven Days: Jake and Stuart Warshaw

Stewart’s Bakery is an artisanal bread bakery located in Williston, VT. Originally founded in 1987 by Stewart Ruth, and since taken over by Jake and Stuart Warshaw in 2021, the bakery strives to provide a bakery product to local markets that is fresh, handmade, all natural, and preservative free. Over the last two years, they have worked closely with the Intervale Food Hub to sell their bakery products to Sodexo at the University of Vermont. As an approved Sodexo vendor, the Intervale Food Hub is positioned to provide institutional market opportunities for local farms and food producers.

Stewart’s Bakery Artisanal Sourdough Bread

The University of Vermont was searching for a replacement bakery after the closure of the Burlington based Koffee Kup bakery in 2021. Through their Comprehensive Sustainability Plan, UVM has committed to increasing their spend on Vermont-grown food to 25% by 2030. With the loss of Koffee Kup, their local spend had decreased significantly, rendering their goal much more difficult. Large institutional kitchens such as UVM require a volume of product that smaller producers are often unable to meet. Jake, co-owner of Stewart’s, spoke about the start of the relationship with UVM, explaining that they had worked with chef Dan Miele when he had previously worked at Bluebird BBQ. In his new role as a chef on the retail culinary team at UVM, Dan ran the burger bar and deli at the Davis Center and was interested in seeing if Stewart’s could produce the volume needed to keep up with UVM’s demand.

Stewart’s was interested in taking on the account; however, they were not an approved Sodexo vendor. The UVM Sodexo team approached the Intervale Food Hub about being the distributor for the product and supporting the growth of Stewart’s Bakery. Being Sodexo approved vendors, the Intervale Food Hub could administratively support Stewart’s relationship with UVM while allowing them to focus on increasing production to meet UVM’s demand. Jake elaborated, saying, “At the start, at that size, we could never justify the time or the cost to try to become Sodexo [vendors] and so the UVM team was like, why don't you talk to the Intervale [Center], see if they're able to help out... And that was the beginning of the relationship. So honestly, without the ability to go through the Intervale [Center], it wouldn't have happened. It couldn't have happened.”

Over time, as Stewart’s was able to prove they could meet demand in the retail dining sector, UVM was interested in having the residential dining halls also source Stewart’s products. To meet the growing volume needed by UVM, Stewart’s needed to scale up their operations. Jake explained that just before they began working with UVM, they were moving towards implementing a machine that would dramatically save time in the bread rounding process. In their process, Jake explained, “Everything gets touched and moved and adjusted, but there's a pre-rounding basically that can occur with the machine that helps a lot... We were in the process of getting it anyway, but this [account] just kind of made it a much easier Return On Investment (ROI) basically.” With increased production, Stewart’s also made the decision to expand into a larger operating space. Jake shared, “The unit next door was opening up and the decision was, do we want to keep trying to expand and basically take it over or do we stay where we are and be pretty small. We decided to take it over, which was huge for us, you know, having space to do everything.” What started as a weekly order to one or two UVM kitchens, quickly grew into a nearly daily order for over 8 kitchens. It was at this point that Stewart’s Bakery, UVM Sodexo, and the Intervale Food Hub knew it was time to get Stewart’s vendor approval status.

Reflecting on the last few years working with Stewart’s, Intervale Food Hub manager, Kristen, said, “Our goal with Stewart’s Bakery was to steward their business growth and relationship with Sodexo to a point where it was sustainable for the two parties to work together directly.” While the third-party audit process for Stewart’s was “highly stressful” and a “huge learning curve for all of us”, Jake shared that at the end of the day it went “really well”. When asked to reflect on how working with the Intervale Center through this process had been, Jake said, “Y'all have been awesome...just helping basically to prove that there's enough market to make it worth going through the whole process, right? Like being willing to support us to a point where it was like, OK, we can justify the cost and the time that this is going to take”.

This relationship exemplifies the work that we do at the Intervale Center – connecting farmers and food businesses to markets and providing them with the tools and support to help their business thrive and maybe even outgrow our services! Through relationship-building and resource-sharing, the Intervale Food Hub is increasing viability for our local food producers and strengthening Vermont’s food economy.

Scaling Success: How the Intervale Food Hub Supported Stewart’s Bakery in Accessing Institutional Markets