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He
scouted the location several years ago, before the striking art museum
transformed the corner across from the Bainbridge Island ferry. Mike
Loudon had his eye on the developing Island Gateway complex and the
building that was already there, partly occupied by Avalara, for a
possible second location for his business, Bainbridge Bakers.However, that building soon was filled entirely by Avalara due to the company’s rapid growth, and a spot in the museum didn’t work out either, but Bainbridge Bakers finally gained a foothold and is now a neighbor to both. The new café at the Island Gateway held its long-awaited grand opening March 23, although the bakery wasn’t going to be open for business until around April 1.
“It’s been a long time,” Loudon said earlier in March, sitting on the patio outside the bakery in the Winslow Green center a few blocks down the street from the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art.
“We’ve been working on that for about six years, believe it or not.”
The Island Gateway location at the corner of State Route 305 and Winslow Way is similar to the original Bainbridge Bakers — which celebrated 28 years in business on the same day as the grand opening — but the new spot is intended to create a different vibe and fill a different niche.
“The model we built for the new place really envisions a whole new audience,” Loudon said. “We’re anticipating and hoping the new place down there isn’t going to cannibalize our business here at all.”
His business will occupy half the ground floor in the creatively named Building B. It also will provide food service for a taproom in the other half, Ale House on Winslow, expected to open this summer.
Bainbridge Bakers will have a 3,000-square foot space, adjacent to the art museum’s patio, that will be “a little more sophisticated, a little fancier” than his other bakery, Loudon said, in keeping with the new surroundings. The new place also is designed to host occasional live entertainment and it will have beer and wine service, although that won’t start until this summer.
“We want to keep this place (in Winslow Green) the neighborhood go-to place,” he said. “The other place is really designed to service the art museum patrons, the Avalara folks and the commuters that will find us.”
Before the museum was more than a vision and before Avalara had moved into the Island Gateway building that’s now its headquarters, Loudon’s bakery had established a relationship with Avalara by catering meetings and social events for the fast-growing company, which also occupies the entire second floor of Building B.
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