Heather and Her Bakery

Warning—this article has many things: brain cancer (cured), the crash of glass to the ground, hope, really good jobs, a Vietnam vet, wedding cake, ships, donuts—lots and lots of donuts— magic fairy dust and much more.

But there is a lot it does not have: eggs, dairy, gluten, soy or any type of preservatives.

In early October, my daughter, Brynne, and I met for coffee and donuts at her favorite establishment in Traverse City: Third Coast Bakery. She has been a customer ever since they first started selling gluten-free baked goods at the Sara Hardy market in 2014. Due to an autoimmune issue she has stopped eating dairy and gluten, and Third Coast’s products are her go-to treats. So I brought her along behind the scenes as I interviewed Heather Burson, owner and head baker.

After we squeezed past the line of people spilling out the door, Brynne went for coffee while I donned a little white hair cover and entered the gleaming kitchen. There were pans of donuts everywhere. Heather and two members of her staff were dipping dozens of pumpkin donuts into cinnamon sugar before sending them on their way to the front of the house.

“Wow,” I said. “That’s a lot of donuts!”

Heather smiled at me. “This is nothing. We are just putting the finishing touches on these.”

I raised an eyebrow. Heather went on. “Last month, we made 30,000 donuts. We are just getting started with this month.”

Brynne came and stood beside me, handed me my coffee and Heather started her story.

Heather Burson: When my husband first got brain cancer I was cleaning out our kitchen and getting rid of all the things that are common pantry staples in the U.S.—premade mixes, factory produced, quick and easy. I thought, “There has to be a different way,” but I could not find anything on the market.

As we cleaned up our diet, we would want to go out to eat with friends, and there was nothing on the menu that we could eat, so I turned to my own kitchen. And of course I am not competitive in the least [she rolls her eyes] so when people said I couldn’t do it, I said “Of course I can make this without soy, wheat, dairy, eggs or—fill in the blank.”

EGT: Did you find cookbooks, look online, make it up in your head?

HB: All of the above. I was given a cookbook from a bakery in New York that was gluten-free and sometimes vegan, and none of her recipes worked. It was the worst cookbook I have ever cooked out of. But it was great because it taught me how to work with a recipe, how to deconstruct it, [discover] what is wrong with it. I learned like a science experiment, the ratios of what works and what doesn’t work. I just geeked out in my kitchen.

I landed on a couple of great recipes, and I started experimenting every week. I was part of a women’s support group and I set up each week for coffee and they said “Why don’t you bring the snack?” They loved all my baked goods and friends told friends and people started to tell me I should open a business! My background is in broadcasting, so I literally had no idea how to be a baker or the first thing about being an entrepreneur.

EGT: So how did you take your first business steps?

As my husband got healthy, he took me to SCORE [a free local business mentoring program]. He cut up some pieces of my baked goods and we went to a walk-in appointment. The SCORE mentors tasted my stuff and said “This is delicious. How can we help you?”

SCORE told me that we could make a limited number of items and sell them at area farmers’ markets, using Michigan’s cottage industry laws. We started really small. We had three or four products. They wanted me to prove there was a market, consistently.

Cooking out of my house lasted for three weeks. I could not keep up. In three weeks I went from “I have an idea” to having a full-fledged business. I had to rent kitchen space at a kitchen incubator. I had an eight-by-ten space, three tables and two table-top mixers. I got my first wholesale account, which was Cuppa Joe, and they have been with us ever since. Then came Edson Farms, and two became four and four became eight and then we got Tom’s. I was still doing the markets. The business just exploded. After one year in the incubator I had to move again, as I just needed so much more space.

I was able to get a commercial kitchen at a farm and have a dedicated gluten-free environment. I started there in 2014. Our grand opening here in the building was in May 2018.

Brynne: I have been a customer of yours since the beginning. When I was diagnosed and changed my diet, it was easier because my mom can make amazing gluten-free treats. But to find you out in the world, it changed my life. I could go out and have a treat just like everyone else.

HB: We had to prove ourselves in this community, and then we got into the Sara Hardy market. We quickly outgrew the farm kitchen, and I had no idea how to grow. But at one of my very first farm markets I met a gentleman who loved my products. John Collins is a retired U.S. Navy commander, Vietnam veteran, and he became my business mentor for the early years, and now he is my business partner. After he was in the military, John ran operations for a university in Illinois, so he knows facilities. I could turn to him and ask him how to grow, and grow properly. His partnership, friendship and assistance in all the areas that I did not know about was essential. He could deal with it all—permits, construction, air gap drains and wastewater flow—while I made donuts.