Wild Oats Bakery & Café – Brunswick, Maine

If you think of baking as a way of connecting people, then it’s not a huge stretch from studying anthropology in college to opening a hometown bakery that offers delicious food and a place for community members to gather. For Becky Shepherd, who along with her husband David owns Wild Oats Bakery & Café in downtown Brunswick, Maine, it was a natural progression.

“Food was pretty central to everything we did,” Becky says of her childhood years. During college, she began baking her own bread and making peanut butter, yogurt, and other homemade foods. “I always had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to have my own bakery and café.”

In October 1991, Becky’s dream came to fruition with the opening of Wild Oats Bakery & Café, which focused first on offering fresh homemade breads, pies, cookies, bars, and cakes. “We have been using King Arthur flour since we started. I had always been a King Arthur fan in my home baking, so that was one of the first product lines I went after,” Becky says.

Today, Wild Oats Bakery has grown in both size and selection. Beyond the basics they started with, the bakery now offers 20 different cookies, 20 bars, 5-6 muffins, 3-5 scones, 6-8 breads, and several coffeecakes – every day. Not to mention cakes, sticky buns, soups, quiche, several chicken salads, vegetarian and vegan selections…the list goes on.

“We make everything from scratch and have a really diverse selection of products,” Becky says. “Our products are really creative and really good. We care about flavor and quality and appearance; we spend a lot of time developing our products and fine-tuning them.” Nearly as important as offering excellent products is earning customer trust and loyalty through a commitment to “fabulous” customer service. Some customer favorites include carrot cake, a chocolate cake made with fresh-brewed local Maine coffee, and sour cream coffeecake baked in sheet pans – the secret to its tenderness, Becky says. Her personal favorite? The Chocolate Phantom Cookie, a brownie-like cookie made with walnuts and raisins.

In addition to providing a meeting place and “Original And Tasty Stuff” (get it? OATS!) for the Brunswick community, Wild Oats is committed to giving something back, too. Its charitable donations program supports arts, education, the environment, and community health in the Midcoast Maine area.

Visit Wild Oats Bakery & Café at the Tontine Mall in downtown Brunswick, Maine, and check out their website for directions, menus, photos, and more.