Goodness Baked In

By Linda Browne

Local businesses are the heart and soul of their communities. Besides providing essential goods and services, employment and contributions to the local economy, they act as spaces where friends and neighbours can gather to catch up and socialize, whether it’s the coffee shop or craft store down the road, or the restaurant, grocery store or hair salon. And while there’s been lots of talk lately about the importance of supporting local, many of these entrepreneurs go above and beyond to give back to their communities, even through all the stress and upheaval that the ongoing pandemic has wrought. For local businesses like Kinden’s Bakery & Café in Lewisporte in central Newfoundland, nothing is more important than supporting those who support them.

You might say that Haley Kinden has baking and business in her blood. In 1969, her paternal grandfather opened a bakery in Etobicoke, Ontario, called Danish Family Bakery (a nod to his homeland), a business where her father worked as a teenager and which he took over in 1982, relocating it nearby and renaming it Little Denmark.

Growing up in Ontario, Haley spent many summers traveling back to Newfoundland with her grandmother (Audrey Northcott, who is originally from Lewisporte) to visit her great-grandparents and started to fall in love with the place. So after high school graduation, she returned to the Rock to continue her studies, met her husband (coincidentally, their grandparents went to school together as children) and eventually became a paramedic in Lewisporte. It was a rewarding job and one that she loved, she says, but after five years of attending to calls and missing out on birthdays, Christmases, school concerts and other special moments in the lives of her three young sons (ages 3, 8 and 11), it started to take an emotional toll. So at the beginning of 2019, she left the job to start a new chapter. After a brief stint working in healthcare in nearby Gander, she decided to take some time to focus on her own health and wellness, and turned her attention to another passion.

For years, Haley had been creating cakes for friends for weddings and other special events as a hobby. But she wasn’t quite sold on the idea of turning it into a business.

But one day, she noticed a post online discussing the kinds of things that people would like to see in Lewisporte. Several people mentioned the idea of having a place to sit and have a coffee, and it got the wheels turning. Putting her initial worries to rest, Haley located a building down by the Lewisporte Marina (the former home of The Pilot community newspaper), got a business advisor and spent the next three months writing her business plan. She started renovating in September of 2019 and on December 11, she officially flung open the doors to Kinden’s Bakery & Café.

Haley and her small staff were kept busy serving up hot drinks, including their very own Lewisporte Blend (courtesy of Just Us! Coffee Roasters Co-op in Grand Pré, Nova Scotia, Canada’s first fair trade and organic coffee roaster), as well as soups, salads, sandwiches and all manner of mouthwatering sweet treats that are incredible, edible pieces of art.

“It’s really nice because everyone we have that works there brings something new to the table, and they all have a passion for baking as well... I’ve been blessed with really, really good employees, a really good team,” Haley says.

Things couldn’t have been going better, and then, three months in, the COVID-19 pandemic forced Haley to make the heartbreaking decision to temporarily lay off her staff and shut the doors. Fortunately, she was still able to do deliveries throughout town. (The bakery reopened with full service in June.)

“It was really lonely for a few months… plus you’re hearing all this pandemic stuff. Ontario was getting hit hard and that’s where my family was. My grandmother turned 90 this year, so I missed that. And on top of that, the first week we were closed, our Pop Kinden here in Lewisporte passed away. So just navigating through all that... it was really difficult,” she says.

Instead of letting the gravity of the situation weigh her down, Haley started thinking about how to use her sweets to help lighten the load of others and lift up her community.

So last March, Kinden’s began doing regular giveback missions, starting with a donation to the local food bank. Giving back felt so good that they kept going, with each gesture bigger than the last. Since then, they’ve brought care packages (including coffee, cupcakes and other treats) to all of the local pharmacies to say thank you; delivered do-it yourself cookie kits to all the seniors homes in the area; hosted free coffee days for all essential workers; visited a local grocery store to purchase gift cards (which a clerk then randomly distributed throughout the day); baked cupcakes for all the local grads; purchased jerseys for the local hockey team; and delivered cookies to local veterans featuring Remembrance Day artwork by local Grade 6 students. (Kinden’s also made a donation to VETS Canada and the Gander Military Family Resource Centre on the students’ behalf.) For perhaps their biggest giveback mission yet, Haley located a small, locally owned bakery or café in every province and territory across the country and asked them to create gift boxes, which were paid for by Kinden’s and delivered to first responder units in each region.

This past December, Kinden’s kicked off their Come From Away cupcake initiative. Developed with the help of Gander resident Diane Davis (who one of the characters from the musical Come From Away is partially based upon), and with the blessing and approval of the Come From Away creative team, the initiative has seen all the profits from the sale of the cupcakes go towards local charities and non-profits. A different benefactor was chosen each month (January’s and February’s recipients were the Canadian Red Cross in Gander and Grand Falls-Windsor). Through this project and others, Haley plans for Kinden’s Bakery to give back for years to come. For her and her team, nothing is more important than building genuine connections and being there for the community, through good times and bad.

"I think that’s what got me into the paramedic thing, is just feeling like I can make a difference somewhere, to somebody… and I felt like that was one thing I really, really mourned when I left the ambulance. So I knew I had to look for creative ways to do that at the café as well," she says.

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