RACINE — The holidays are a time for baking, which means that U Bake arrived just in time.
The store at 2504 S. Green Bay Road is the 12th store of its kind, selling mostly ready-to-bake cookies, breads, pies, rolls and more. U Bake opened three weeks ago, and co-owner Mike D’Amour said business has been hotter than a just-baked peach pie.
“I wish I had triple the floor space,” he said Monday afternoon as a steady stream of customers came and went.
“This is nothing,” said D’Amour, whose wife, Nancy, is his business partner. Together theCaledonia couple own Oui Corp. which has several investments, all of them in Racine enterprises.
Sunday, Mike said, at times U Bake had well over 50 people in the store at once.
The concept is pretty simple: Selling goodies that are already blended, formed and ready to go onto a baking sheet. Two customers who wandered in Monday and gazed into the freezers liked the idea.“We’re looking for an easy way to get out of baking,” said Lou Nield of Racine. “I love baking, but you have to have a lot of time for it.”
Her friend, Myrtle Singsheim of Caledonia, said, “If you have company, you don’t have to have a lot of things sitting around that you don’t use very often.”
The D’Amours discovered U Bake products when they owned a place in Door County. “My youngest daughter used to come in with a lot of great frozen bakery,” Mike said. She told them it came from a store in Green Bay — called U Bake.
The founder, Todd Utecht, opened his first store in Wausau. Then he opened a second in Green Bay. Soon he began signing licensing agreements so other people could open U Bake stores.
Hundreds of products
D’Amour, who retired about a year ago after working for 30 years in international business, and Nancy signed a licensing agreement giving them exclusive rights to Racine and
Kenosha counties.
The couple, both 58, now have U Bake store No. 12. All but one are in Wisconsin, and most products also come from in-state suppliers, D’Amour said.
Unlike a franchise, the licensing agreement gives each operator wide latitude in how to operate and what to carry. But frozen doughs make up about 70 percent of sales, D’Amour said.
The Racine U Bake has 21 freezer doors; behind each are five shelves, each three feet deep, of frozen products. D’Amour estimated they carry more than 50 kinds of cookies, 40 kinds of breads, about 20 kinds of dinner rolls and about 40 types of pastries.
A bag of 20-24 frozen cookies sells for about $5 to $7.50, and two loaves of bread cost about $3.50 to $5.00.
Besides frozen products, there are countless baking ingredients — from dried ginger or mango slices to potato starch and coarse-ground pumpernickel rye.
Snacks include old-fashioned candies, whole-wheat pretzels, organic rye berries and wasabi-coated peas or soy nuts. U Bake also has both soup bases and dry soup mixes which D’Amour said are selling well.
The D’Amours also offer frozen hors d’oeuvres, a wide range of gluten-free products and sugar-free products for diabetics.
If the Racine U Bake store does well, Mike said, he and Nancy may open another store in Kenosha, and U Bake will reach a baker’s dozen.
