Update: La Casita Bakeshop is located in its new Richardson space at 580 W. Arapaho Rd., Ste. 154, Richardson as of Jan. 14, 2023.
The rapid rise of Maricsa Trejo’s career and bakery is impressive but unsurprising. The 31-year-old pastry chef, who went from watching YouTube videos on how to make croissants to running one of the highest profile bakeries in North Texas and receiving a James Beard nomination, is a vessel of unfettered grit and energy.
Her Richardson bakery, La Casita Bakeshop, which started as a small side hustle for Trejo and her husband and business partner Alex Henderson, now provides pastries to more than 70 coffee shops and food businesses in North Texas. They also churn out towering cruffins, croissants, quiches, sandwiches, brown butter cookies and all other manner of baked goods for retail customers and pop-up events. And the business is growing. This summer, the bakery is moving out of the space they’ve been in since spring of 2020 and into a new 6,000-square-foot space that will help them keep up with demand.
A robust education in the form of El Centro Community College’s culinary program and training under pastry chefs like Stephan Collucci in New York put Trejo on a well-paved path toward success, but good ol’ roll-your-sleeves-up scrappiness got her the rest of the way. For several years, she spent seven days a week baking into the night, and she grew her business by going door-to-door, asking local businesses to give her pastries a chance.
“There were nights I would go to bed crying, worried I was wasting away the last of my 20s to do something that I didn’t know would be successful or not,” Trejo says. “But as a kid, I watched my immigrant dad work six to seven days a week to take care of his six daughters and our mom. And I thought, ‘If my dad can do it, I can do it too, because I have the same blood.’”
At times she thought the business wouldn’t survive, like mid-2021 when pandemic-induced burnout, exhaustion and carpal tunnel syndrome from working nonstop almost pushed her to call it quits. They brought on more staff and changed the menu from weekly to monthly rotations. Now, with 17 employees and time for more creative energy, La Casita, and Trejo, are becoming household names in the local and national pastry sphere.
The business has outgrown its cramped 1,200-square-foot Richardson bakery and storefront, where customers line up for pastries on weekend mornings. By the end of summer 2022, La Casita will be housed in a new space just a short 130 feet from its current location, but with 4,800 more square feet to work with.
“It all seems worth it now,” Trejo says.
On one hot weekday morning in the current bakery, Trejo pulls pastry shells out of the oven while one employee fills silicone molds with chocolate for pan au chocolat. Another employee mixes brownie batter, another fervently whisks pastry cream, and Henderson pours quiche filling into crusts layered with thick pieces of ham and Swiss cheese. It’s a cramped but coordinated effort that somehow produces 2,200 to 2,700 pastries a day for the likes of Cultivar Coffee, Okaeri Cafe, Parks Coffee and La La Land Kind Cafe.
In the new sprawling La Casita bakery, which was a CrossFit gym in a previous life, there is enough space for a huge pastry and coffee counter, a dining room, multiple walk-in refrigerators, and a generously sized kitchen with a separate croissant room. Trejo and Henderson plan to do exactly what they’re doing now with La Casita, but with even more retail business and the addition of weekend brunches and eventually dinners where Henderson (who has an impressive resume of his own) can really show his culinary chops.
Trejo is proud of the success they’ve had and that they’re able to give their employees a more comfortable space to work in, but she says she’s even more proud of the fact that they offer all employees comprehensive health insurance and a healthy work environment absent the toxicity she and Henderson experienced at various kitchens they worked in over the years.
“I grew up with five sisters with no health insurance,” Trejo says. “One of the dreams I had was to be able to offer that for my employees, and it’s one of the things I’m most proud of.”
To be able to do that, Trejo says they work hard to keep their operating budget low by purchasing used equipment and being as resourceful as possible. Croissant dough scraps are used to make monkey bread, croissant loafs or to supplement other doughs. Over-baked cookies become cookie butter to be used in other desserts. This resourcefulness also allows them to keep their prices lower than much of their competition, she says.
As the daughter of immigrants from Guanajuato, Mexico, Trejo says resourcefulness was necessary growing up, and food was utilitarian. There was nothing romantic about what or how they ate.
“I grew up on chicken stock with a little chicken and tortillas. That was all we could afford,” she says.
But she also grew up with Alton Brown and Ina Garten on TV, as well as her Argentinian godmother’s beef empanadas, which introduced her to a foreign but thrilling world of savory pastry and new flavors. She didn’t dream that she would have a culinary career of her own one day, let alone run a bakery or be nominated for a James Beard Award, but food was always there as a comfort and a way of connecting with people.
“I never thought I’d have my own business or get recognition for what I do. A lot of people do what I do,” she says. “If someone can make something better than I can, all the more power to them. We’re not pretentious.”
She and Henderson are humble about their work and gladly hand out their sourdough starter and quiche recipe when customers come asking. Food is supposed to be communal, Trejo says, and they just want to feed as many people as they can. For Trejo, watching someone bite into one of her pastries and be transported to a memory or a feeling is cathartic, and it fuels the long days and late nights.
It’s fueling her now as she balances on the exciting but intimidating precipice of the next phase of her business and career.
“I’m straddling this weird place. It’s a weird headspace to be in,” she says, “but I’m ready.”
La Casita Bakeshop is located at 580 W. Arapaho Rd. Suite 154, Richardson, TX 75080. lacasitabakeshop.com.
