Submitted by Julie Clement, CCA BC Director
That things must be done differently now is a given as we approach the twelve-month mark of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even gathering articles for our newsletter has been affected, so for this issue we sent some questions to Katherine Taylor, owner of SaraBella’s Gluten Free Café in Chilliwack, and hope that you will enjoy reading about her experiences catering to the gluten free communityWhat is your work background?
I grew up working on a farm and did a short stint as a carpet cleaner before I got into the barista life. I started working in coffee shops about 13 years ago and while I fell in love with the work, I realized that I didn’t enjoy working for other people.
What prompted you to start your gluten free business? Do you have people in your family with celiac disease or other gluten-related conditions?
About 10 years ago I made a new friend who happened to be celiac. At a time when I was often baking for get-togethers with friends, I felt bad that this friend could never actually eat anything. I started by making cupcakes from boxed cake mixes but quickly realized that they were pretty terrible. I wanted to do better than that, so after a fair bit of research, I was purchasing different gluten free flours and mixing my own blends based on what I had learned. I had a lot of duds, but eventually the blend I made was turning out really well in a lot of different recipes.
Around the same time, I was taking classes so I could learn how to write up a business plan and get things rolling to start my own coffee shop. One of the things I learned was that coffee shops are a dime a dozen and if you don’t have something to set you apart from the competition, you’ll probably not make it. That’s when I decided to merge my dream of opening a coffee shop and my hobby of gluten free baking. Once those pieces fell into place, I took a management job at one of the first coffee shops I’d ever worked at so that I could get the experience I needed to run my own. In 2015 I quit that job to pursue the dream. I spent a year looking for the right location, and in August 2016 I signed the lease and after major renovations we officially opened in March 2017.
How many of your staff are celiac? How do the team stay up to date on the needs of people eating gluten free?
At the moment, none of my staff are celiac though one of them has a sibling who is. We get a lot of customer feedback which is super helpful. People let us know what they wish they could eat and if it’s something we can make happen, we do our best to do it. I love to wander the specialty food aisle at the grocery store to see what’s new and I’ll often try what I find just to see what we are competing with. I also just really love food, and since I’m not celiac myself, when I find something I really enjoy I’ll start figuring out in my head how I could make it gluten free or vegan (we do a lot of that as well). That’s actually one of my favourite things about what we do. Taking regular recipes/meals/treats and making them gluten free and vegan by adjusting the necessary ingredients instead of looking up specific recipes that are meant to be gluten free. I love the challenge of converting recipes and making them work! Not being gluten free ourselves really gives us an edge; if something doesn’t taste as good as the regular gluten-filled version then it’s not something we want to put our name on. Our products taste just as good as the regular stuff!
Where are your products produced? Is the facility dedicated gluten free?
Currently, all our products are produced in our café in Chilliwack and we are a dedicated gluten and nut free facility. With the new products we’ve been able to launch during COVID-19, we’ll be looking to expand soon to keep up with the demand. We will always be 100% gluten free, though I would love to have one bakery location that does everything vegan but that isn’t nut free.
What is your bakery known for? What are your best sellers? What is your personal favourite?
We’re known for our huge variety of baked goods. On any given day we have 30+ different treats to choose from in our bake case as well as our menu items and coffee options. I would have to say that our best sellers are our oat fudge bars and our cupcakes. My personal favourite is either our banana brownie with cream cheese icing or the wowbutter confetti bar.
What have been the main challenges and successes you have faced?
I think our biggest challenge in the first year was consistency, but as we’ve evolved, I think we face the same challenges that all newer businesses face; things like keeping wage costs low without compromising customer service, staying relevant with new products, and making sure your team works well together. Our greatest successes have been the various new products we’ve been able to launch over the years: our dry mixes that are currently being carried by 9 other businesses, and our frozen take-and-bake cookie pucks, pies, and pizzas.
How have you adapted during the pandemic? What has been your greatest challenge, or has there been a silver lining?
We have made a lot of changes during the pandemic. We’ve switched to takeout only, and we launched several new products in our retail freezer that we just didn’t have room or time for before. The greatest challenge has been juggling all these new things all while staffing less. The silver lining has been that we have launched more new products this year than any year before, and we’ve been able to make significant changes to staffing and operations that we needed to make before but just weren’t able to due to customer expectations.
Do you deliver? To what areas?
We don’t offer delivery, but you can purchase our dry mixes on our website and have them shipped anywhere in Canada! https://sarabellasgf.com/
What do you see as the future of your business?
I see the future of our business as having other stores carrying our products. We want good gluten free products to be accessible and our first goal is to be in retailers all the way across Canada.
If you were starting over, would you do things differently? Is there any help or support that you wish had been available?
If I could start over, I would do a lot of things differently. I would start with being open fewer hours, having a more limited menu to start, fewer staff. Basically, growing into the demand a little better than we did. It would have been nice to have a mentor to offer guidance with opening a new business, but we made things work!
What would be the most important piece of advice you would give to somebody newly diagnosed with celiac?
Don’t panic! It’s overwhelming, but there are so many good products available these days. If you can find a good one-to-one gluten free flour blend (I recommend SaraBella’s flour mix) you can continue to use all your favourite recipes without even thinking about it. It’s so much easier when you don’t have to find new recipes for everything.
SaraBella’s contact information:
Address: 101-8705 Young Rd, Chilliwack BC V2P 4P3
Phone: 604-392-3378
Website: https//sarabellasgf.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sarabellasglutenfree/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarabellasgf/
Discount code: Use BCCELIAC20 to get 20% off SaraBella’s mixes ordered before June 30, 2021
I grew up working on a farm and did a short stint as a carpet cleaner before I got into the barista life. I started working in coffee shops about 13 years ago and while I fell in love with the work, I realized that I didn’t enjoy working for other people.
What prompted you to start your gluten free business? Do you have people in your family with celiac disease or other gluten-related conditions?
About 10 years ago I made a new friend who happened to be celiac. At a time when I was often baking for get-togethers with friends, I felt bad that this friend could never actually eat anything. I started by making cupcakes from boxed cake mixes but quickly realized that they were pretty terrible. I wanted to do better than that, so after a fair bit of research, I was purchasing different gluten free flours and mixing my own blends based on what I had learned. I had a lot of duds, but eventually the blend I made was turning out really well in a lot of different recipes.
Around the same time, I was taking classes so I could learn how to write up a business plan and get things rolling to start my own coffee shop. One of the things I learned was that coffee shops are a dime a dozen and if you don’t have something to set you apart from the competition, you’ll probably not make it. That’s when I decided to merge my dream of opening a coffee shop and my hobby of gluten free baking. Once those pieces fell into place, I took a management job at one of the first coffee shops I’d ever worked at so that I could get the experience I needed to run my own. In 2015 I quit that job to pursue the dream. I spent a year looking for the right location, and in August 2016 I signed the lease and after major renovations we officially opened in March 2017.
How many of your staff are celiac? How do the team stay up to date on the needs of people eating gluten free?
At the moment, none of my staff are celiac though one of them has a sibling who is. We get a lot of customer feedback which is super helpful. People let us know what they wish they could eat and if it’s something we can make happen, we do our best to do it. I love to wander the specialty food aisle at the grocery store to see what’s new and I’ll often try what I find just to see what we are competing with. I also just really love food, and since I’m not celiac myself, when I find something I really enjoy I’ll start figuring out in my head how I could make it gluten free or vegan (we do a lot of that as well). That’s actually one of my favourite things about what we do. Taking regular recipes/meals/treats and making them gluten free and vegan by adjusting the necessary ingredients instead of looking up specific recipes that are meant to be gluten free. I love the challenge of converting recipes and making them work! Not being gluten free ourselves really gives us an edge; if something doesn’t taste as good as the regular gluten-filled version then it’s not something we want to put our name on. Our products taste just as good as the regular stuff!
Where are your products produced? Is the facility dedicated gluten free?
Currently, all our products are produced in our café in Chilliwack and we are a dedicated gluten and nut free facility. With the new products we’ve been able to launch during COVID-19, we’ll be looking to expand soon to keep up with the demand. We will always be 100% gluten free, though I would love to have one bakery location that does everything vegan but that isn’t nut free.
What is your bakery known for? What are your best sellers? What is your personal favourite?
We’re known for our huge variety of baked goods. On any given day we have 30+ different treats to choose from in our bake case as well as our menu items and coffee options. I would have to say that our best sellers are our oat fudge bars and our cupcakes. My personal favourite is either our banana brownie with cream cheese icing or the wowbutter confetti bar.
What have been the main challenges and successes you have faced?
I think our biggest challenge in the first year was consistency, but as we’ve evolved, I think we face the same challenges that all newer businesses face; things like keeping wage costs low without compromising customer service, staying relevant with new products, and making sure your team works well together. Our greatest successes have been the various new products we’ve been able to launch over the years: our dry mixes that are currently being carried by 9 other businesses, and our frozen take-and-bake cookie pucks, pies, and pizzas.
How have you adapted during the pandemic? What has been your greatest challenge, or has there been a silver lining?
We have made a lot of changes during the pandemic. We’ve switched to takeout only, and we launched several new products in our retail freezer that we just didn’t have room or time for before. The greatest challenge has been juggling all these new things all while staffing less. The silver lining has been that we have launched more new products this year than any year before, and we’ve been able to make significant changes to staffing and operations that we needed to make before but just weren’t able to due to customer expectations.
Do you deliver? To what areas?
We don’t offer delivery, but you can purchase our dry mixes on our website and have them shipped anywhere in Canada! https://sarabellasgf.com/
What do you see as the future of your business?
I see the future of our business as having other stores carrying our products. We want good gluten free products to be accessible and our first goal is to be in retailers all the way across Canada.
If you were starting over, would you do things differently? Is there any help or support that you wish had been available?
If I could start over, I would do a lot of things differently. I would start with being open fewer hours, having a more limited menu to start, fewer staff. Basically, growing into the demand a little better than we did. It would have been nice to have a mentor to offer guidance with opening a new business, but we made things work!
What would be the most important piece of advice you would give to somebody newly diagnosed with celiac?
Don’t panic! It’s overwhelming, but there are so many good products available these days. If you can find a good one-to-one gluten free flour blend (I recommend SaraBella’s flour mix) you can continue to use all your favourite recipes without even thinking about it. It’s so much easier when you don’t have to find new recipes for everything.
SaraBella’s contact information:
Address: 101-8705 Young Rd, Chilliwack BC V2P 4P3
Phone: 604-392-3378
Website: https//sarabellasgf.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sarabellasglutenfree/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarabellasgf/
Discount code: Use BCCELIAC20 to get 20% off SaraBella’s mixes ordered before June 30, 2021