South Side bakery sweetens the pot for burgeoning business district

Denise Nicholes and Julie Welborn stand in their bakery, a Perfect Peace Cafe and Bakery.
Kerry Leonard/Medill

MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

Denise Nicholes crouched down to peer into the back of the pristine pastry case at the plate of sliced brown sugar pound cake that her regular customer Rev. Clarence Lumumba James pointed to.

“That should have a label,” she explained to James as she checked to see if it had been misplaced.

“Some things speak for themselves,” James said, smiling and requesting a piece to go.

Nicholes and her business partner Julie Welborn are hoping that their new shop, A Perfect Peace Café and Bakery at 1255 W. 79th St. in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood, will do just that and more.

Jonathan Swain, who visits A Perfect Peace every day to check on its progress, is delighted with what he has seen.

“For a start-up business and where they are, they’re doing very well,” he said, adding, “I think it’s important that when kids come in there they see two African American women owning a business.”

“They see the excellence of their space, the excellence of their food, and it sets a tremendous standard,” Swain reflected.

“Here are two African American women," said the Rev. Michael Pfleger of nearby St. Sabina Church, "who’ve always had this dream to open up their business. So we put them together – and we invested.”

Pfleger is the founder of The Beloved Community, a business incubator program born out of St. Sabina to foster economic development in Auburn Gresham.

“People come in and say, ‘Wow, this is like being downtown or on the North Side. Are you sure you belong here?’” Welborn recounted. “We weren’t anticipating any of that.”

What they were anticipating was a bake shop-meets-mission where customers could come together and experience God, truth, and most notably, peace.

“This is a ministry to me,” Welborn said. “Because a ministry is serving people.”

The brightly lit shop, located on a stretch of 79th Street once bereft of sustainable businesses, is painted in lavender and magenta hues, with the half-dozen café tables adding green accents. A vase of flowers sits at each table and art created by local school children decorates the walls. Several hanging blackboards neatly display the desserts, gourmet sandwiches, salads and soups offered daily. Two culinary school graduates hired by Welborn and Nicholes assemble sandwiches and bake in the immaculate kitchen behind the counter.

Welborn alternately checks her laptop computer and tends to customers, while Nicholes works a panini press that fills the 1400-square-foot shop with the smell of marinated, roasted vegetables. They tag in and out of their duties, helping, laughing and chatting with the continuous stream of hungry folk that enter the shop well after the lunch rush.

“This is not just a bakery,” said James. “This is an upscale, gourmet bakery.”

Opened last July, A Perfect Peace is part of a larger effort to revitalize a commercial district long dominated by businesses undervaluing the growth potential of the area. According to the Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corp., the neighborhood is roughly 90 percent African American with a glut of businesses such as liquor stores and barber shops that did little to encourage outside visitors to come in and much to encourage residents to take their dollars elsewhere.

“We realized that there was about $46 million leaving the community annually,” said Ernest Sanders, new communities program organizer and director for community outreach for the organization. “We discovered what industries and what sectors were present in the community and what was really lacking.”

What was lacking was African American-owned and operated businesses, especially the sort like A Perfect Peace.

“We realized we needed more catering and food industry,” he continued. A detailed 2007 potential market scan of the neighborhood conducted by the Development Corp. revealed that the demand for such establishments pushed towards a potential $60 million in business revenue. The available pool of generated revenue was closer to $47 million.

It's businesses like the bakery, in addition to anchor stores and other general retail shops, that Sanders believes will help Auburn Gresham reach its goal of being a destination shopping spot.

“They share the same spiritual intimacy to revitalize this community,” Sanders said of Welborn, Nicholes and the development efforts. “And it is definitely the reason they are in business.”

Julie Welborn's and Denise Nicholes’ partnership had a lot to do with chance, and as they contend, more to do with strong faith. Welborn, 42 and unmarried, had earned two master's degrees and was living in her Hyde Park condominium, working as a youth pastor at St. Sabina Church across the street from where her shop now stands. Nicholes, the newly single mother of 12-year-old twin girls, had worked in catering and for a Marriott Hotel after getting her degree from the Culinary and Hospitality Institute of Chicago.

“I’m a people person,” Welborn said. “Denise’s passion is food. She speaks through her food.”

They shared a vision to open a peaceful place, where food and community could come together, and they were both parishioners at St. Sabina. This is where their similarities ended, for Welborn and Nicholes knew each other only in passing. Their pastor, Pfleger, said the church community stepped in to play matchmaker when everyone saw them as the perfect pieces to complete this ambitious puzzle.

Welborn and Nicholes hit it off, hashed out a plan, quit their day jobs and, for over a year, catered by day and dreamt big by night.

“We really, soup to nuts, helped them with every single step,” said Jonathan Swain, executive director of The Beloved Community. “The business plan, the marketing plan, the legal plan… and then just supporting them through this process.”

Such support came in the form of investors cultivated from St. Sabina and the steady, built-in clientele an adjacent, populous and involved church can provide. But for two women new to business ownership, they were not without their growing pains.

“Oh, the first month I cried every day,” Welborn laughed.

“I’m tired!” Nicholes recalled thinking, “When are we going to get some help?”

But with frustration came clarity.

“No, this is what I want. This is it,” Nicholes continued, “and it’s worth it. It’s all going to pay off.”

The business, a mere seven months old, is beginning to see that payoff slowly come around.

“We’re doing okay. I think we’re starting to break even a little bit,” Welborn said. “We’re still getting into the numbers game and covering our costs and checking our pricing.” She said the average day’s sales tally roughly $650 to $700, with more revenue generated around holidays or from big catering jobs. Welborn is quick to caution that there is a broad range to daily sales, and that they'll get a better grasp on what they can expect after a full year of business.

“At the end of the day, you’ve gotta make numbers. But also at the end of the day, were you kind to someone?” Welborn mused.

Sandwich prices range from $4.99 to $6.25, salads run slightly less and slices of cake are priced from $1.69 to $2.99. The most expensive item on the menu is a full-sheet cake with filling, $80.99. Conversely, a peanut butter cookie with peanut butter chips will set the customer back a mere 59 cents.

A Perfect Peace is setting standards not only for the vitality and local ownership of Auburn Gresham’s business community, but for its overall physical health as well.

“You’re walking down 79th Street and it’s fast-food this, fast-food that,” Nicholes said. “People in the community, we need to learn to eat better, healthier. We’re just trying to give them a healthier alternative.”

Organizations such as The Beloved Community and the Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corp. are committed to seeing this vision of a revitalized neighborhood through, but decidedly not at the expense of the residents who call the area home.

“You look around and you see neighborhoods changing – but you see new people moving in,” Pfleger said. “Fine, if people move in. But we want everyone here to stay put.”

“This is one of the few communities in Chicago where development is taking place but there is no gentrification,” he continued.

Swain and Sanders believe long time residents are staying put, investing in their community and that a new generation is considering doing the same.

“I think it’s a very positive message and an influence on the neighborhood as a whole,” said Robert Bryant, 23, an employee at A Perfect Peace. “It’s just a nice place – it’s refreshing.”

A neighborhood long deserving of being refreshed and revitalized, said Swain, can look fondly to a business that is helping it on its way towards a renaissance.

“People say, ‘Why?’ and I say, ‘Because you deserve it!’ We deserve something nice on 79th Street.” Welborn said. “People want to see things – good things – happen here.”