Artisan bakery Gulf Coast Sourdough buys Sulphur Springs warehouse for expansion
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Nov 17, 2020

The sourdough bread baking craze of 2020 — a popular quarantine hobby early on in the pandemic — may seem like a distant memory now. But that flurry of interest has helped an artisan sandwich shop in Seminole Heights expand.

Gulf Coast Sour Dough, which opened a sandwich shop in Seminole Heights in 2019, has acquired a Sulphur Springs warehouse that will be built out as a wholesale bakery. The bakery paid $255,000 for the property in September, according to Hillsborough County property records; all in, the expansion will total around half a million dollars, financed through a U.S. Small Business Administration loan, said Brett Wiewiora, co-founder and chief operating officer.

Leonard Contractors Inc. is the general contractor on the project. While the bakery's wholesale orders plummeted when Florida closed down indoor dining to slow the virus' spread, more retail customers found their way to the sandwich shop for takeout orders — and to take a free sourdough starter, which Gulf Coast has always given out, said Christina Cann, co-founder and CEO. (Wiewiora and Cann are husband and wife.)

Before the pandemic, Gulf Coast was giving out a few starters a week; at the height of stay-at-home orders, the bakery was giving away dozens a day.

Wholesale orders have returned to their pre-pandemic levels, Cann said, but the bakery is at maximum capacity in its current location. And while consumers may not be staying at home and baking, she says the sourdough trend put a spotlight on artisan breads.

"We’ve been talking about a bread revolution for a couple years now," Cann said, "because people are understanding that bread is so much more than a bland afterthought for your sandwich. It can be a really delicious flavor layer."

About three dozen restaurants in the Bay area are current wholesale customers, and the bread is also sold in both Rollin' Oats locations in Tampa and St. Petersburg as well as Nature's Food Patch in Clearwater and vegan grocer Black Radish in V.M. Ybor. With the increased capacity, Cann said, the bakery will be able to offer volume discounts to its wholesale customers.

Gulf Coast hasn't yet been able to return to its in-person classes, which it offered before the pandemic. The couple said they've been questioned about the business sense in hosting baking classes. But the pandemic baking craze, like their classes, have benefitted the shop for the better.

"I think what it did was it gave people a taste for it and an appreciation for the process," Wiewiora said. "We've been asked, 'If you teach somebody to bake, will they ever come buy it from you?' But a lot of the students who took classes became our best customers."