SAVOR ENCORE
Its Niche Is Quiche
The Bakewell Co. builds a following for its savory creations KARA NORMAN
Brian Powers
by
When Erin Hill finished high school in
2000, she thought about going to college but couldn’t figure out what to study. While taking general classes at Kellogg Community College, she worked at a bookstore for a year and didn’t like it. Then she worked at a bakery and found her thing. “At the time, it was really stressful, because most people go to college right away. I felt like, ‘I can’t figure out what I want to do with my life!’ You feel like you’re behind. But in the long run it was the right thing to do,” Hill says with a mirthful chirp of a laugh. Hill is sitting at a long stainless-steel table in the industrial kitchen of The Bakewell Co., the small business she owns in Kalamazoo 16 | ENCORE APRIL 2017
that employs up to 21 people in the summer, making 2,000 quiches a week to sell at 14 farmers’ markets from Holland to Marshall. Hill, who is 35 and lives in Climax, grew up in Battle Creek as the oldest of four kids. Her parents were hobby farmers who sold poultry and pork and eggs from pastureraised chickens to friends and family before they started selling their Pleasant Hill Farm products at the Battle Creek Farmers' Market 16 years ago. Hill started Bakewell in 2009 by bringing a few quiches to market to sell to her parents’ customers. She sold out the first day. At the time, she wanted to start a fullscale bakery selling cakes and pastries as
Above: Sisters Erin Hill, left, and Andrea Hill, keep The Bakewell Co. running. Opposite page: Bakewell specializes in quiche such as those pictured at top and bottom, but also makes sweet treats like these Bakewells, at right, for which the company is named.
well as quiche. But while the sweets she later brought to markets languished on her parents’ table there, people got continually excited about the quiches. “Nobody else sells quiche exclusively in all the markets we’ve been to,” Hill says. “Somebody might have one or two, but nobody else specializes in it like we do.” That’s her theory for the popularity of her quiche. The ingredients she uses can’t hurt either. Two favorite quiches are the Sausage, Cheddar and Chive and the Goat