Store History

Welcome to That Pretzel Dough, we are so thrilled to have you intrigued about our business history and store front creation. As you can imagine by the name of our business, pretzels were our staple item, in fact they were our only item for the first year. We would twist, roll, braid and dip our pretzels in to all different shapes and sizes to curate as many varieties as possible. We would sell our beautiful pretzel breads at farmers markets on a weekly basis all year round, rain or shine. Battling the Canadian weather, you can imagine there were beautiful sunny days and snowy Octobers with 4 am wake up calls that we had to adapt to each week in order to keep the business on it's feet. 

During these markets and these kitchen prep days we collected as many videos and pictures as possible in order to build up our website and social media platform. We used these endless photos for an entire year while we built new clientele and attending new events. From here, our orders grew, our team grew and we locked in our second Aurora location for pre order pick ups. We spent the next two years building our business, delivering packages and adding new market locations. We dipped into simple pastry, sandwich platters and added charcuterie platters to our menu. At this time we discovered we were in the "Celebration" industry and moved towards expanding our menu for birthdays, gatherings and any form of celebration. 

After two years of our Aurora location we finally felt ready to move into a walk in store. This decision was easily made based on our current clientele, monthly income, same day demand and walk ins looking to shop. Now, if you think relators would be throwing them selves at our 27 year old female owner, you're wrong. We went through countless commercial listings before anyone had even responded to an email or phone call. Finally, after two months of searching and a affidavit from our lawyer, we finally secured a commercial realtor. Balancing a personal life, prebooked events / orders and new staff, we were now juggling site visits, facetime video calls for potential sites, and zoning certificates / exemptions. It was an emotional rollercoaster. Designing each location in our minds and on paper of what the floor plan would be. We would get turned down one after another. Being a new bakery in an already existing plaza, some situations came to a vote from existing tenants whether they wanted another retailer in the plaza or if there would be enough parking for our guests. It felt like defeat at times and we considered just giving up the dream of a walk in store. Sulking on the sofa with every no that came our way, felt like the end of our journey each time. But if we only knew, "this to shall pass" and every no that came our way was for a reason, the process would have been much more enjoyable. We then realized, that first offer we placed would have been too small as we now have over 2,000 sq ft. And that second place did not have the proper foot traffic for walkers, now noticing this as a sidewalk store front. Everything happens for a reason, and with that came our Maple Store front Location at the corner of Keele and Major Mackenzie, right in the Centre of my home town where I grew up. We finally found our walk in store front. 

From here a new journey began, convincing equipment companies and contractors that our financial statements were real and that this wasn't " daddy's money" became frustrating and endless. I found it much easier to age my self two years to 30 so I could be taken more seriously. It was a rough start communicating tasks to people who were waiting for a man to give direction, until everyone got paid by a woman and then the ball was rolling. After two months of renovations, we began our hiring and training process. Week after week we would hire another girl, another woman to our team and to this day have some of our first employees still with us. It is extremely important to us that our team feels safe and comfortable in the work force. Having a team of all females was done purposefully  to show them they have their individual strengths and to build confidence and healthy communication skills within a group dynamic. Each team member was given their own tasks to take ownership of that would showcase their own managerial skills and accountability within our small knit group. Whenever I, the owner was away, I made sure to let them know that I will stick by whatever decision they make, knowing they chose that route based on the needs of the business. This instilled confidence and courage in their day to day and show cased those skills within the business and the training of new team members.

It has now been 2 years this summer that our bakery has been open and we can not be any more grateful and blessed that we are still here standing tall. A lot of small business have closed down during the past pandemic and we really pushed through and gave it our all. We are so excited to see what the next year has to offer in our town and we can not thank you enough for supporting all of us along the way. We now have over 16 team members on both store front and event staff all who which are either saving for college, in university, international students, paying mortgages, planning weddings or raising a family. 

We look forward to meeting you in person in the store or your next event :)