Why Small Businesses Matter
Shop small, do big things for your community
Why Small Businesses Matter puts a spotlight on the local merchants who donate their time, talent, goods, and services for the betterment of our community. The shop local movement spreads virally as local businesses who are “tagged” have the opportunity to share their story!
You're IT Beldotti Bakery!
Four questions with Lisa Beldotti from Beldotti Bakery.
Why did you start your business?
Mike Beldotti worked as a teenager in a bakery as a dishwasher slowly working his way up and learning more about the business. After graduating college, that same bakery was for sale! With his father's help, Mike began his own bakery journey. Then once his younger brother Chris had graduated college, he joined the business! One quote you can always hear Mike saying is "I only make things I like to eat myself!"
To wake up in the early hours of the morning and engage in the hard labor of baking each and every product we have in our store truly takes a love for the industry, a love for baking, and a huge love for PEOPLE. Serving the Stamford community for over 35 years is what we love to do and seeing the look on a kid's face trying to decide between a cupcake or a cookie or someone new to town coming in for a fresh loaf of bread is priceless to us.
What is your best-selling product/service?
I think our best selling product would have to be our bread, more specifically our Tuscan loaf which is our hard-crusted Italian loaf that is perfect for sandwiches, buttered toast, or just as is. However, with the launch of our new line of donuts impending we have a sneaking suspicion that line out the door on weekend mornings won't just be for our bread anymore!
How many local businesses do you use to support your business (products and services) and can you name them?
Being a local and family run business it means so much to us when people and local business support us, so we try to emulate that and do the same for business around us and in our community. We recently switch from a large coffee distributor to a much smaller family-run local coffee roaster, Omar Coffee, that we feel is a huge step up with amazing coffee. We are huge supporters and contributors to the Hope In Motion organization, we are constantly fundraising, volunteering for events, and participating in their big walk every year. They are a great organization that truly helped members of our family that we will forever be grateful for.
Have you "reimagined" your small business?
During this past difficult year during the pandemic, it has been hard not to reimagine a lot of things in our lives. Our small business has definitely undergone some of what we think are amazing changes! We are bringing in our family's younger generation for fresh new ideas. One great example of this is our addition of a new line of specialty donuts. We have put in new equipment and revamped our store display to launch on Friday, June 4th National Donut Day our amazing line of fancy specialty donuts with cool flavors like Keylime Pie, S'mores, Blueberry cake, and classics like a Glazed Stick or a Black Raspberry Jelly.
Another way we reimagined our business is by focusing more on our social media accounts. Our Facebook and Instagram have been upgraded and posted regularly with real-time products and updates! We have also made some more much-needed additions and upgrades like our website (coming soon to an Internet near you) which we will hopefully have up and running by June. Our loyal and new amazing customers are why we are here and can do what we love every day so we owe it to them and ourselves to constantly reimagine!
Beldotti Bakery is located at 605 Newfield Avenue in Stamford. Visit the Beldotti Bakery Facebook page here!
HamletHub thanks Fairfield County Bank for making our Why Small Businesses Matter series possible!