COMPANY HISTORY

In 1978, after working for a major donut chain, my late brother Joe and I, with the help of our parents, purchased the “Donut Ring” shops in Salem and Peabody. It was a rough start, but with a lot of help from family, the business eventually grew. Our Dad did the bookkeeping for free, we couldn’t afford to buy uniforms, so our grandmother sewed smocks  for the crew. One weekend our cousins and uncle came down and painted the whole building for us.

In 1988 Joe and I split up, and I came to the Bridge Street store and re-named it “Coffee Time Bake Shop”.  At that point we started evolving from a donut shop to more of a bakery by adding our “Real Cream Bismarks” and later expanding into cakes.  Many local students have worked here through high school and college, including my own kids. I’ve been at this so long that kids of former teen employees have come to work here as well.

We still have family working here and hopefully one or more of them will take over eventually. We are kind of “Old School” but  we keep evolving towards more scratch made bakery foods, great breakfast sandwiches, delicious cakes and interesting beverages.

SUSTAINABILITY PRACTICES

Buying Local: A large portion of our dairy products come from Dunajski Dairy in Peabody MA. Yes, there are cows in Peabody.

Straws & Cups:  We use 100% compostable straws.  Our small hot cups are also compostable. (we expect to add other cups and lids soon)

Electricity: We purchase 100% renewable energy from a mix of sources, through Dynergy’s Salem Aggregation.

Recycling & Composting: We compost 27 64 gallon totes of compost monthly through Black Earth Compost. We participate in Salem’s curbside recycling program for plastic, glass, and metal. Our cardboard is recycled through Hiltz Disposal.

We know our recycling efforts are not 100% complete , but we do make an effort to recycle where practical. This is especially true for metals.

Covid has temporarily reduced our recycling of plastics. For safety reasons we are not rinsing and recycling anything that was in anyone’s mouth.