Have you soured of your sourdough hobby yet during this pandemic? Have you tried making croissants? Village Baking Co. has opened its second shop in Dallas, and its co-owners are banking on the idea that you’d rather leave the baking to the pros. After all, it takes their bakers 48 hours to make a batch of croissants.
On Jan. 12, the co-owners opened a new Village Baking Co. on Travis Street in Dallas, an easy walk off the Katy Trail. It’s an area of Dallas that co-founder Clint Cooper says he’s been eyeing for 15 years.
“There’s a need for a neighborhood bakery, and we’re trying to fulfill that,” Cooper says. He co-founded the company with his wife, Kim Cooper.
The company operates an existing bakery and coffee shop, on Lowest Greenville. It’s beloved among bread connoisseurs, and customers drive from all corners of Dallas-Fort Worth to buy their baguettes and croissants.
The shop has a sweet back story, which starts with Clint Cooper attending culinary school in San Francisco, then traveling around France “getting to know the finer details of French pastry and French bread.” The Coopers opened a bakery in Colleyville in 2004, then transitioned to making bread wholesale and selling it at farmers markets.
Working weekends at farmers markets in cities like Coppell, McKinney and others helped the Coopers establish a base of customers who loved fresh-baked bread.
Today, the company’s two restaurants serve an array of French pastries like pain au chocolat (a chocolate croissant), financiers, kouign-amann and bacon-cheddar croissants. The shop also sells croque monsieur and reuben sandwiches as well as quiches.
At the new shop near Highland Park, customers can dine indoors at two tables or take a seat outside at one of seven tables. The shops on Greenville and Travis are designed to feel cozy and contained, traits that extend to the business plan.
“The idea is to have small footprints of stores and to deliver high-quality bread, consistently,” Clint Cooper says. All of the bread is made at a bakehouse in the Dallas Design District. Centralizing that process makes it easier to replicate a quality product, says Seth Bame, co-owner.
Sitting inside the shops, which feel like French cafes, customers probably wouldn’t realize that 80% of Village Baking Co.’s business is selling bread to large companies. Village Baking Co.’s bakers make all of the sliced bread and croissants for 7-Eleven’s 700 stores in Texas. They also supply much of the bread for Hello Fresh, the meal kit delivery service.
“The key idea here is that we put the same detail into the hundreds of thousands of hamburger buns we do a year, as we do a simple croissant, our No. 1 seller in retail stores,” Clint Cooper says.
Eventually, the company will likely expand to other Dallas neighborhoods, says Mark Plunkett, co-owner.
The team signed the lease on Travis Street just over three months ago, with the intention of offering a to-go product — bread and coffee — during a time when customers are ordering takeout more than ever before.
“We connected with people and they connected with us,” Bame says. “That’s really what drove us to go to this next location.”
Village Baking Co. is at 4539 Travis St., Dallas. It opened Jan. 12, 2021. Food and drinks are available for dine-in and take-out.
