Inscribed on the wall behind the display case at the Four Flours Baking Company in downtown New Haven are the words, “a bite of happiness!”
That phrase, says owner and founder Robin Schaffer, is what her business is all about. The energetic and ebullient 60-year-old doesn’t just want to fill stomachs. She wants to lift spirits.
“If you eat one of my cookies, maybe it will make you feel happy for while,” Schaffer says. “It’s stressful out there. I feel like in a small way I’m making people feel better about their lives.”
Four Flours, named after Schaffer’s children (her four “flowers”), sells everything from breads, brownies and cookies to sandwiches and soups in its bright and airy store at 1203 Chapel St. The bakery also does a tidy business in Internet orders, gift baskets, and catering, Schaffer said.
But Four Flours’ most unique product is the Chillwich, a trademarked treat Schaffer created consisting of ice cream sandwiched between two of the bakery’s cookies. She sells the confection, which comes in 10 combinations, not only at the shop, but also from a food truck that attends farmers markets and other events and parks daily at 245 Church St.
The business is very much a family affair. She and her husband Tony sank a good chunk of their savings into opening the Chapel Street shop nearly two years ago, while her four kids have each taken turns over the years running the Chillwich truck.
“I call myself the CBO, the chief baking officer,” Schaffer quips. “My husband is the CFO, who does all the financials.”
Entrepreneurial by nature, Schaffer’s journey to baking success was anything but direct. After graduating from Yale University, the Woodbridge native spent two years in New York City helping make commercials, but tired of the big city. She returned home and hit upon an unusual product for her first business: pencils with fancy and unusual designs. She dubbed her product “Indispensibles” and from 1985 to 1990 sold them from a store at Erector Square in New Haven’s Fair Haven section.
In the early 1990s, Schaffer branched out into clothing, opening a store on upper State Street in New Haven. But by the mid-1990s, she and her husband had four children, and she decided to close down the business and devote herself to motherhood full time.
Schaffer has had a flair and love for baking since her teens. Around 2000, a friend asked her to put together a gift basket of her cranberry and white chocolate cookies. They were a hit, and Schaffer decided to launch her third business. She installed a commercial kitchen in the basement of her Woodbridge home where she began baking cookies, brownies and other goodies and selling them wholesale.
Four Flours flourished over the next dozen-plus years, selling to retailers throughout the greater New Haven area. Around 2005, Schaffer invented the Chillwich and began selling it from a truck. During those years Four Flours was a one-woman operation, with Schaffer doing virtually all the baking and delivery. The business had the added benefit of allowing her to be home for her kids, she said.
“I would bake and then when they came home from school, I would play or take them to sports,” Schaffer said.
As her kids got older and went to college, and she and her husband planned a move to another home, Schaffer realized her business was at a turning point. Was it time to expand? Definitely, she decided.
“It was either go forward or not,” she said. “I wasn’t ready to give up because I put so much into it.”
In December 2015, Schaffer, with her husband’s help, took Four Flours to the next level, opening a retail outlet and bakery at their current Chapel Street location. She went from one employee to five — three full-time, two part-time — and estimates her business tripled its revenue. Schaffer also expanded into sandwiches and soups and continued to send her Chillwich truck around the area.
It was Schaffer’s rise from home baker to brick-and-mortar business owner that led the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce to give her its annual Small Business Achievement Award in September, chamber President Tony Rescigno said.
“This is a very interesting entrepreneurial story,” Rescigno said. “Here’s someone who starts a small business in her home and builds it into something phenomenal that everybody loves. It’s been a huge success.”
What’s been the hardest part of the transition to a bigger operation? Managing staff, Schaffer said without hesitation. Another challenge has been delegating certain tasks, mixing dough, for example, she said.
Schaffer is already thinking about expansion, perhaps a second Chillwich truck.
“I’m ready,” she said. “I’m going to bring it.”
Christopher Hoffman can be reached at news@newhavenbiz.com
