WWW.KPBJ.COM
JANUARY 2015 | 23
Business openings
New spot suits baker of countless cakes and donuts
photos by MEEGAN M. REID
Nostalgia House Bakery and Deli owner Lois Sietman prepares dill chicken salad while visiting with regular customer Ken Lewallen on Dec. 23, a few days after the bakery opened in its new location in the Westbay Center in Port Orchard.
Nostalgia House Bakery and Deli moves into larger, more visible location By Tim Kelly KPBJ editor Nostalgia House Bakery and Deli is no longer tucked away on the back side of a small parking lot behind a bar. The transition was more challenging — and more expensive — than owner Lois Sietman anticipated, but she got her family business open just before Christmas in a larger, more visible location in Port Orchard. Sietman’s a 33-year veteran of the food industry, and she may have created more donuts in Kitsap County than any other baker since she started at the once-iconic Milt’s Donuts in Bremerton. Back then Milt’s kept the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and the Navy bases at Bangor and Keyport supplied with donuts. “We used to do 200 to 300 dozen raised donuts a day, and 100 to 150 dozen cake donuts a day,” Sietman recalled. “We did massive amounts for the three military installations, and that’s where I got my start in donuts.” She also spent a long time over two stints as bakery manager at Ralph’s Red Apple grocery store in Bremerton; she and her daughter operated one of the big-
Teresa Ehrhardt, who helps her mother, Lois Sietman, at Nostalgia House Bakery and Deli, displays a tray of fresh donuts.
gest food booths at the former Bremerton Sunday market for several years; and for more than eight years Sietman commuted to work in Seattle at the Washington State Convention Center, working her way up to executive pastry chef. The longtime baker and cake decora-
tor has lived in Kitsap County most of her life, though she opened her first incarnation of Nostalgia House in Spokane, when she and her husband moved back to her hometown for awhile in the early 1990s. Sietman and her daughter, Teresa Ehrhardt, restarted the family bakery in
Port Orchard two years ago when they took over the former Dippity Donuts, located in a small building in back of the Red Dog Saloon that sits at the intersection of Mile Hill Drive and Retsil Road. It wasn’t a very visible location for a retail bakery, but at the time it was a good opportunity to take over a turnkey operation and get back into running her own business. They moved nostalgia to their new house 1,800-square-foot space in the WestWHAT: Bakery bay Center at Bay and deli serving Street and Bethbreakfast and lunch, el Road to have and specializing in a larger kitchen custom-decorated for Sietman and cakes more table space WHERE: Westbay for serving breakCenter, 1341 Bay St. fast and lunch, in Port Orchard and to be easier HOURS: 6 a.m. to for customers to 3:30 p.m. Tuesdayfind. Friday, 7 a.m. to 2 “The space p.m. Saturday-Sunday, was just not big closed Mondays enough for us anymore. We INFO: 360-443-2977 couldn’t expand at all where we were,” Sietman said. “We didn’t have room for another refrigerated case. The kitchen was so tiny I was cooking on a two-burner hot plate, and now I have a real stove.” Their previous location felt cramped because it was divided into different rooms. The new location is one large, airy room with a high ceiling, freshly painted white walls and large storefront windows. “One of the things that we really liked about this is we wanted the open concept. We wanted people to be able to see what we are doing,” said Sietman, a gregarious baker who likes to interact with her regulars as she works. Nostalgia House now has “a homey feel,” Ehrhardt said. “It’s us, it’s not taking over someone else’s prestarted business.” They had been looking at an even larger vacant space next to Dollar Tree in the shopping center on Bethel Road by the Mile Hill Drive roundabout. Sietman said it would have cost more to lease, but they figured that would be offset by the increase in business from having their bakery on a busy street. However, she said the property owner would only lease the space to “a regional or national tenant.” She’s happy to have wound up in the Westbay Center, although there was a lot more stress than she bargained for in getting the new place opened. Most of it had to do with completing work and scheduling required inspections for the various permits they needed to open their new business location. She commended city staff who were see bakery | 28