Woman Runs Honor System Bakery Out of Her Driveway

Woman Runs Honor System Bakery Out of Her Driveway

She feeds her community with freshly baked goods. They fill her cup week after week.

Today.com

A neighborhood bakery uses trust as its main ingredient.

“I have always baked my whole life,” Wendy House tells TODAY.com. 

“I had a German baker grandmother, and that’s always been my heart and passion, but I never explored it and had the nerve to do it professionally. People along the way have always told me, ‘You should sell your cookies. You should sell your bread.’ And I was like, ‘I don’t want a bakery.’”

While working for years as a pharmacist, House raised four sons with her husband of 34 years in the Portland, Oregon area. Now, as a stay-at-home mom approaching empty-nester status, she has her own business — and it’s booming.

“Hi, my name is Wendy, and if you’re new here, I run an honor system microbakery from my driveway,” House says in a viral video on her popular social media account, Little House Bread Co.

“This all started with a tiny greenhouse, a lofty idea, and a few freshly baked sourdough loaves.
It’s since grown to a much larger greenhouse and a full bakery menu.”

Now, caramelized-onion Gruyère sourdough and freshly baked cinnamon rolls are just two of the many items she regularly makes for her customers, who must be local, as she doesn’t ship.

“I asked all of my friends, you know, business friends, ‘Would you buy baked goods off the side of the road?’ And almost everybody said, ‘Absolutely not — that is stranger danger,’” House recalls.

“I kind of backshelved it for a while,” she says. “Then, I was just at a stage of life, I’ve got two adult boys, two still in high school, and I was going through kind of a sense of grief, just processing what’s next for me after I was full-time mom for so long, and I was walking through Costco with my husband, and I saw the greenhouse, and a light bulb clicked, and I thought, ‘What if I actually sell it out of that?’”

From the beginning, House set it up as a self-serve honor system bakery, so there’s no storefront, no checkout line, no cashier — unless you count the customers themselves, who have access to a calculator and a pad of paper for more complex orders.

“I started that way because I was just having friends and neighbors come, so I didn’t really think much of it, it was just an organic way to do it,” House says. Eventually, total strangers started to come, sometimes from long distances.

“I still have people who drive an hour, two hours to come sometimes, and they were all being incredibly honest,” she says. “Occasionally, here and there, I have something that goes, and I chalk it up to a mistake. But honestly, it’s been the most incredible thing. Everybody has been so incredibly honest.”

Since not everyone can make it to her microbakery, House’s family set up a website for people to find the one closest to them.

House says the microbakery community is refreshingly noncompetitive on social media, with local bakers constantly sharing their tips. House gives advice on how to keep inclusions from ruining your crumb and scone-making technique, and thinks more people should take up the mantle.

“If you know a baker, encourage them,” she says. “I think that a lot of people are unaware of cottage food laws in their state, and it’s relatively easy to operate under cottage food laws and work from home.”

“I think a lot of people, particularly stay-at-home mothers or dads, have figured out that they can do this on the side and still be home with kids, which is incredible,” House says. “It’s really a great way to make income.”

It might not be what most people expect when they think of a bakery but, she says, it works for her, her family and her community.

“Thank you so much for being part of something small and special,” she says at the end of a video. “It fills my cup week after week.”