A recipe for success

She was living the American dream.

With a loving family and a rewarding job in charge of banquet services for the Grand Hyatt Hotel in downtown Seattle, Amy Shay had it all — or so you’d think.

“Something was missing,” said the Silver Lake mother of two.

As far back as she can remember, Shay dreamt of running her own bakery — of comforting people with homemade cakes and breads and cookies.

“I think I was 6 or 7; my parents had guests over to the house for dinner, and the kids were supposed to be in bed. But I snuck downstairs and grabbed these pretty little glasses out of the cupboard and poured milk in them for everyone and served them at the dinner table.” Shay explained. “That’s my earliest memory of cooking for people. It’s just something that I’ve always loved to do.”

When she learned in October that her former bosses at the House of Bread in Mill Creek were selling their business, Shay pondered the opportunity for a couple of months and finally seized her childhood dream.

“It’s a gamble,” she said of leaving a good-paying job at the Hyatt to start her own business in a struggling economy. “For me, this is my dance — baking, playing with recipes. The deciding factor was that I needed to dance.”

Amy’s Bakery and Cafe opened for business Feb. 1 in the very spot she started her career five years ago as head baker for the House of Bread.

Despite the risks — and she’s well aware of the challenges she faces in the current economic climate — Shay is as optimistic as ever that her business will thrive. She’s familiar with the area, having worked there for three years between 2004 and 2007; she knows her clientèle.

Stationed behind a butcher block in the back of the bakery, Shay watches customers stroll in and out of her restaurant all day long.

“I spent three years in this exact spot, so I got to know the faces of everyone who came in here,” she said, chopping a sticky mixture of apples, cinnamon syrup and fresh dough. “I can’t say I remember all their names, but I’d recognize their faces anywhere. So already knowing our customers was a huge plus for me; we’re not reinventing the wheel.”

While it seems counter intuitive to start a business in a lackluster economy, local small business brokers Gus Gustavson and Sharon McCrae from Sunbelt of Seattle say it’s actually an ideal time for entrepreneurs to get their feet wet.

Gustavson and McCrae — business partners for nearly 30 years — have been flooded with inquiries about business listings in Snohomish and King counties for months, a trend they attribute to big corporations like Starbucks, Microsoft and Boeing that are thinning their ranks.

“People are being forced into entrepreneurial roles,” McCrae said. “They can’t find work in their fields because no one is hiring so their only other option is to go into business for themselves.”

Shay’s situation is a little unique — after all she left her job willingly — but she figures if Charles Lubin made Sara Lee a household name in confectioneries during the Great Depression, “I can make this bakery a success.”

It helps that Shay stems from a long line of independent businesspeople. Her parents owned their business and even her husband, Matt Shay, owns a landscaping business.

She’s well aware of sacrifices involved in running a family-owned business — vacations are few and far between and there’s no boss to blame when things go wrong.

“But it’s worth it to have all the creative control,” she said. “This was an opportunity for me to do something that I’ve always wanted to do and something that I love.”

For now, she’s employed her husband and two teenage children to staff the bakery, which operates seven days a week. Once she gets established, Shay will hire additional staff as needed.

“I’d definitely consider myself a risk taker,” she said. “You have to be to run a successful business.”

Shay says loyal House of Bread customers can expect the same service and quality products, but they can also expect some changes — new recipes, an array of cakes and goodies and other sweet specialties.

Her goal is that customers walk away with the feeling that she’s baked something just for them.

“When I was a kid, my friends and I would bake cakes and go around door-to-door, selling them to our neighbors,” she said laughing. “Food is so comforting, I like that feeling of lifting people’s spirits with food.

“That’s what I do.”