Cover Story: MacKenzies Bakery

When Mardi Gras is being celebrated in New Orleans, John MacKenzie’s phone will often ring at MacKenzie’s Cafe & Bakery in Kalamazoo: Callers from Louisiana ready to place their specialty orders.

Wrong bakery, MacKenzie tells them. They want the one with the similar name — McKenzie’s — right there in New Orleans.

MacKenzie, who owns the Kalamazoo bakery with locations on West Main and Harrison streets, always gets a kick out of the confusion between the two bakeries with similar names. 12

THREE GENERATIONS OF SWEET TREATS AND HEARTY BREADS

By Dave Person david.r.person@gmail.com

There’s a third MacKenzie’s Bakery, spelled the same way as the one in Kalamazoo, in Scotland, MacKenzie says, but he hasn’t gotten calls from any of its customers wanting to place orders.

It’s not that he couldn’t meet their expectations. His Scottish Struan bread is one of the most popular items at his bakery, and come Mardi Gras time at the end of February, his bakers will be hard at work rolling out Polish paczki “Auntie Blanche”, above. John MacKenzie, right.

(pronounced PUUNCH-kee) in preparation for Fat Tuesday, the day before the start of Lent.

“We only make them on that Monday (the day before Fat

Tuesday) and Tuesday,” says MacKenzie, whose bakers come in early those days and concentrate on nothing else until they have baked 300 dozen of the specialty fi lled sweet rolls.

“Everybody’s on the crew to make paczki,” he says. “We start early and work late.”

They’re not alone, of course. Other bakeries and grocery stores also sell the sweet treats, but MacKenzie is proud of the always-fresh product that fl ies out of the doors of his bakery during those two days each year.

This year Mackenzie’s will be selling paczki on Feb. 24 and 25.

The round and fl attened sweet yeast

dough, made with fats, butter and eggs, is fi lled with fruit, traditionally prunes, but MacKenzie also sells them with chocolate, lemon, raspberry and — his personal favorite — custard fi lling.

“In the Middle Ages they wanted to use up all their sweets before Lent,” MacKenzie says, otherwise they might go bad. So there went the lard, sugar, eggs and the most popular fruit of the day, prunes, into a rich delicacy.

For local Mardi Gras parties, MacKenzie’s also offers king cakes, a popular item at festivities in New Orleans.

MacKenzie, 72, is a third-generation baker. It all started in the early 1920s with his grandmother Nona MacKenzie, who sold her homemade bread, potato-fried cakes, sweet rolls and pies at the roadside produce stand that she and her husband, Henry “Cap” MacKenzie, ran on M-140 between South Haven and Covert.

Her sister, Blanche Rosenberger, then joined her, bringing her baking and catering skills from Chicago, and soon they opened the Little Home Bakery at 1004 S. Burdick Street in Kalamazoo.

Nona and Blanche, with help from Gerald MacKenzie, Cap and Nona’s son, subsequently opened a bakery in South Haven in 1938, but it was forced to close because of food rationing during World War II, John MacKenzie says.

After the war, the MacKenzies opened another bakery in South Haven, which continues today as the Golden Brown Bakery under other ownership. John and his sisters, Mary and Janet, got their feet wet working in that bakery.

After he fi nished school in the early 1970s, John MacKenzie was employed

“My dad was retiring (in 1980) and my sister (Mary) wanted something to do,” he says.

So the siblings, with help from their father, started MacKenzie’s Bakery on West Main Street in Kalamazoo.

“I took all the formulas (used in baking) from the bakery in South Haven,” MacKenzie says.

That was the starting point to where he is now.

“Over the years, everything changes,” he says. “We’re always kind of tweaking (recipes). …You just kind of have to adjust to your customers.”

An early example was Jewish rye bread, which was popular in South Haven, with its large Jewish population.

But in Kalamazoo, not so much. So MacKenzie changed the name to caraway rye bread and sales increased.

In 1988, MacKenzie opened a bakery on South Westnedge Avenue in Portage, and in 1998 built the bakery and sandwich shop at 527 Harrison Street. In 2008, MacKenzie built corporate offi ces and a pastry bakery next to the bakery on Harrison.

MacKenzie says he has had fun creating many different kinds of products over the years.

In 1986, he says, “I went to France for a week and took a course in bread baking.” Twelve years later, when the fi rst Harrison location opened, he incorporated a French deck oven.

“It mimics a hearth-based, stone-deck oven,” he says. “It gives it (the bread) a nice crust.”

A year-and-a-half ago, MacKenzie closed his Portage location. “In 1980, there were a lot of retail bakeries,” he says. “But the landscape has changed.”

Baked goods are available in many locations, so bakeries must specialize.

In that regard, MacKenzie’s has held its own. “Business is OK; it’s changing,” he says. “We’re always monitoring what people want.”

“I take pride in what I’ve been doing, and it’s unique,” MacKenzie says of the reasons he has enjoyed his career.

But he is getting ready to turn more of the day-to-day work over to his managers as he eases into retirement this year. His sister Mary is already retired.

“I’ll be working part-time, semi-retired,” he says.

In the meantime, MacKenzie has put the bakery up for sale, hoping that someone will want to take over what continues to be a thriving business.