It seemed like the moment the doors to the Village Bakery opened in Atwater during the Fall of 2009, the business began to flourish. The unmistakable thing that draws you into this spot on busy Los Feliz Boulevard is the neighborly feeling and sense of community. It’s immediate when you walk through their front doors. Much of this has to do with owner and founder Barbara Monderine, who clearly adores her job.
A former music industry exec, Barbara is self taught and well practiced. When working at Warner Bros. Records, she slowly became obsessed with baking and would leave her job every evening to go home & concentrate on baking. The next morning co-workers would hang around her workspace to get a sample of her new treats! During this period she also met Theresa Wahl who was catering for Warner Bros. at the time. The two formed a quick connection and eventually began baking together for Theresa’s company. This ultimately led to Auntie Em’s Kitchen, which they co-founded together in 2002. After about 3 successful years together, Barbara made the decision to sell her share of the business to Theresa so she could concentrate on pursuing her own venture.
After a year off, Barbara and her husband Richard acquired a wholesale bakery and began supplying Italian baked goods to several restaurants throughout the city. It was also during this time that the L.A. Bread Company closed its doors and their space and equipment came up for sale. Barbara & Richard jumped at the amazing opportunity facing them and soon after, The Village Bakery and Café was born. As luck would have it, 3 weeks after they started, an adjacent furniture store also went out of business so they immediately acquired that space as well. It took several months before they could afford a total build out, but eventually they were able to successfully double their interior space to accommodate more patrons.
We were honored to sit down recently with the lovely Barbara for a chat, and a yummy almond croissant (or two!)
I love that the experience here is unique and feels very family oriented with communal tables, was that intentional?
Yes, very intentional! Some people like them more than others. This sounds silly but in Los Angeles one of the biggest complaints is that people are in their cars all the time where in places like New York, you’re walking from home to work and vice versa and sometimes you stop off at the neighborhood bar or café. It’s not so much the case in Los Angeles. The thing communal tables does for us, especially in this neighborhood, is invites people that come in with their kids to feel like it’s a real family atmosphere. There are a whole lot of diverse people that come in here, especially on a weekend. And people get to meet each other. When you have a two year old fascinated with another two year old at the table, conversation is born from that and it makes it a great atmosphere. It works for this neighborhood.
Describe your typical morning.
It’s nice right now because I have such a great staff. Basically the first thing I do is just make sure that everybody is doing his/her job and that everyone is on point. I go around to each and every person that is here and see if they need help, if they are okay and on point. Then usually what I do is help to get everything set up in the morning because the most important thing for me when those doors open at 8 o’clock is to have everything out of the oven, all the baked goods, displayed in the case. Because we don’t open until 8 am, its important for when people do come in that the case if full and they aren’t waiting on the croissants to come out. Overall I know how to do every single job in this restaurant. I’ve mopped the floors, done the dishes, chopped and peeled the potatoes, made the croissants, you know, I know how to do everything. So that’s my typical day but some days I might have to be the person that comes in at 4:30 or 5 in the morning because maybe the person that was supposed to do the croissants is sick or their car broke down. Part of the reason this job is so great is because I never know what may be thrown at me… it is also one of the downfalls!
What’s your favorite part about the neighborhood you are in?
I actually like my regulars. I like that people come in, say hello and give me a big hug. I feel like I live in a real neighborhood. I’ve lived in Los Angeles since 1980 and I haven’t felt like I was in a real neighborhood until we opened up this place four years ago. It’s a community. When we first opened, I had a woman who came in when she was pregnant and now her little daughter comes in, walks up, says “Hi” to me and gives me a hug and has her favorite things. That’s pretty cool I think. There are so many kids here that I’ve known since they were born and that’s pretty cool. As you get older you get excited about stuff like that I think. I know the neighborhood here.
What’s your least favorite thing about the neighborhood?
Hmmm, I don’t know, as I really like this neighborhood. I guess I wish sometimes we had a quieter area for people to sit out here. You know what I mean, I wish it wasn’t such a busy street but that’s kind of the beauty of it too, that we are on a busy street.
How does Social Media help, do you feel it entices your customers to come in that particular day? The pictures definitely feel enticing to me!
I try really hard to take good pictures but it’s just from my iPhone. I always have it in my pocket as it’s used as my timer too. I’m just learning all the different aspects of Social Media but I definitely think it helps. Right now we have somewhere around 2300 followers on Facebook and we’re building followers on Instagram and Twitter.
You have a stand at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market; do you source any of your veggies or fruits there?
Yes we do! We do trade outs with people sometimes. A lot of times I’ll do a jam as I did today, we made a jam filling for our hand pies out of pear and ginger. I got all my pears there. We don’t do as much as we want but we would like to get more into doing that there with the farmers. The stand itself does well for us there though, depending on the weather. It’s a nice marketing tool for us, it helps get us out there and say “Hi” to the other neighborhoods. We do a lot of wholesale as well where we make bread for a variety of different restaurants throughout town…which is one of the reasons someone is working here almost 24 hours.
What do you consider to be your tried and true best seller?
On the bakery side of things, something like those little nutty chocolate chip cookies I could sell all day long. I think our croissants are the best in town; we’ve really worked hard on those. Our lemon rosemary olive oil cake is a huge seller too. Our most popular breakfast is our Atwater special that has the polenta, scrambled eggs, bacon and spinach. We do fried chicken on Fridays only or when we have the biscuit special. Now that we can actually take vacations we plan out where we’re going to eat; for inspiration or ideas. When I was younger it was around what bands were playing but now it’s about where we are going to eat.
If you were able to have anyone over for pastries who would you invite?
My Mom. She was a great baker, just fantastic baker. I wish my parents were around to see this, to have them at one of those communal tables. They would be proud. My Mom would not believe it, in a million years. So yeah, that’s who I would have.
Final thoughts?
We don’t get any press to speak of, we are a word of mouth business and that’s better than press to be honest. So many people come in and ask how do you do it? It’s just simple; I just like being here every day. I wish sometimes I had more time off, but I genially like it. It makes me happy. I get to come in and bake every day!
The Village Bakery and Cafe
3119 Los Feliz Blvd.
Atwater Village, CA 90039
(323)662-8600
Hours:
Mon-Fri: 8am-7pm
Sat-Sun: 8am-4pm
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Photos by: Kelly Norris Sarno
