TOMAH, Wis. — It’s been two years since West Salem native Stephanie Brickl left her bakery job in La Crosse to open The Baker’s Table coffee and bake shop at 223 N. Superior Ave. in Tomah.
She’s pleased with how the shop’s business has grown and attributes that to expanding its product selection.
“It just keeps getting busier and busier,” Brickl said. “We’ve added sandwiches, bagels and scones and different baked goods. We’re adding more and more items as we can.”
Brickl opened her shop in September 2018, offering a variety of coffee and tea drinks, smoothies, soda pop, juices and lots of baked items, such as artisan breads, custom and wedding cakes, cupcakes, breakfast pastries, muffins, cookies, brownies, bars, doughnuts, cheesecake, and some gluten-free products.
Since then, Brickl has expanded the menu to include such things as a variety of sandwiches, salads, chili, a soup of the day and a daily side dish.
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The Baker’s Table also has seasonal items, such as pies during the Christmas and Easter holiday seasons. And it sells merchandise such as Wonderstate Coffee (formerly known as Kickapoo Coffee), loose-leaf tea, Cry Baby Craig’s hot sauce, pottery and a protein product used to make smoothies.
The shop’s most popular sandwich has been zesty turkey club. “It’s a classic turkey club, but just a little tuned up with Cajun turkey and zesty mayo,” Brickl said. “Our chicken salad sandwich is also very popular.”
The Baker’s Table makes both hot and cold sandwiches. “In the winter, the hot sandwiches are the most popular,” Brickl said. “Our muffuletta sandwich is really popular in the winter.”
The coffee and bake shop’s coconut cake and its raspberry dark chocolate cake are two of its biggest-selling cake varieties. “And we also sell a lot of cupcakes,” Brickl said.
Some of the shop’s most popular cheesecake flavors are raspberry, cherry, blueberry, chocolate and blueberry lemon.
Cream of chicken with wild rice is one of its biggest-selling soups.
Bakery items, sandwiches and coffee drinks each account for about one-third of sales at The Baker’s Table, Brickl said. “And it depends on the season,” she added. “During the holidays, it will be more bakery” items.
The shop is open from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Saturday and closed Sunday, and probably will expand hours this fall. It begins serving lunch items — sandwiches, salads, side dish and soup — at 10 a.m.
Many of its customers live in Tomah. “We have our regulars,” Brickl said. “But you also get some (travelers) off the interstate” highway, she said. “And Fort McCoy is nearby.”
The coronavirus pandemic has caused an increase in the number of customers who eat in the shop’s outdoor dining area, Brickl said. “For the most part, we’re busier outside than inside,” she said of the two seating areas. “And our drive-thru (traffic) has really picked up” because of the pandemic.
Brickl’s staff is taking coronavirus precautions, such as wearing masks.
The Baker’s Table closed March 17 after Gov. Tony Evers issued a stay-at-home order aimed at slowing the spread of coronavirus. It reopened about a month later for drive-thru and carryout. “We weren’t open for inside seating” until later, Brickl said.
As a business that serves food, the shop wasn’t required to totally shut down, she said. “But business had dropped off (because of the pandemic), and we figured we would close for about a month,” Brickl said.
Brickl, who is 31, has been baking ever since she was a girl. She graduated from Coulee Christian School in West Salem in 2008, and from the baking and patisserie program at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts Minneapolis/St. Paul in 2012.
She was assistant bakery manager at the People’s Food Co-op in La Crosse for 2½ years before she left to start her Tomah business. Before working at the food co-op, she had been a baker at the Festival Foods store in Onalaska for three years.
“I come from a family that’s owned businesses” and her parents are “really good cooks,” Brickl said. “I enjoy working with my hands. Seeing it all the way through is very rewarding — you make it, you sell it and see the results of your work.”
The Baker’s Table is in the remodeled building that used to house the lobby of the former Lark Inn motel. Brickl said she chose Tomah for her business partly because she knew the property’s owners, and because Tomah is a great, growing community that could use a shop such as hers.