Maricsa Trejo’s small-business story feels good.
She taught herself how to make croissants by watching YouTube videos. In 2017, she started working at Small Brewpub in Oak Cliff after hours, trading them free handmade hamburger buns for a no-rent kitchen. Trejo delivered her pastries in the middle of the night, then would "go home super tired and do it all the next day.”
Eventually, her little company, La Casita Bakeshop, got too big for a borrowed kitchen.
Trejo first moved her bakery business to Pilotworks, a commercial kitchen with rentable space. Then Pilotworks closed abruptly and Trejo found a new spot in Carrollton. Despite all that movement, Trejo and boyfriend Alex Henderson had grown the business to serve more than 30 shops in North Texas. They also hosted pop-ups, selling croissants and other pastries, which connected them to more potential customers.
Finally, Trejo and Henderson opened their first bakery — one that’s exclusively theirs — on Feb. 8, 2020. They’ll use it mostly as a commissary for making pastries for their clients. Their pastries are sold at coffee shops, including Houndstooth and Cultivar in Dallas.
Trejo seems pleased to have a more permanent bakery.
“I’ve sat down at 3 in the morning trying to make croissants from scratch, crying and asking why I can’t get this right,” she says. “But if I can’t get this, I have to go work for someone else.”
She says her croissants are both her favorite pastry to make and her favorite one to eat — though, incredibly, she says she eats one croissant every six months.
Trejo still has a late-night schedule that ends with baking croissants until about 1 a.m. And she still drives pastries to her clients starting at 1:30 a.m., though she hired someone to take on most of those shifts so she can focus on operating a new storefront.
“I like doing this,” she says. “It’s becoming something I didn’t know it was going to become.”
La Casita Bakeshop is open to the public on Saturdays only. Trejo sells her popular croissants (which come in several flavors) as well as a “grande” chocolate chip cookie, handpies, lemon tarts and more.
La Casita Bakeshop is at 580 W. Arapaho Road, Richardson.
For more food news, follow Sarah Blaskovich on Twitter at @sblaskovich.
