October 6, 2021
The Batch House makes its return this month
The beloved bakery was open for a year — during the pandemic — before a flood closed it down
A stack of oatmeal creme pies, a top seller at The Batch House. Photo courtesy of The Batch House
After becoming a beloved ghost bakery concept, The Batchmaker moved into a brick-and-mortar space, opening as The Batch House in October 2019. Fans of owner Cris Rojas Agurcia’s playful baked goods flocked to the store — and then the pandemic hit. The Batch House closed for several months before reopening in June to do pickups. A year after their initial debut, the bakery opened its doors to customers again. They were ramping up for Thanksgiving, stocked with the ingredients and supplies necessary for a rush of holiday orders, when the storm came.
The rainfall of a torrential thunderstorm flooded the bakery, ruining everything but a few boxes of china high on shelves. From expensive equipment to packaging supplies and ingredients, everything was gone. And because it was due to a flood, none of the losses were covered by insurance.
The City Kitch stepped in, offering The Batch House team space to finish their holiday orders. Once those orders were complete, Rojas Agurcia set herself back to the task of finding the bakery a new home. Despite the difficulty of restarting the business, she knew if she didn’t try again, she would be left wondering what could’ve happened.
“It wasn’t something that I decided the first time around,” she says. “It was something that was kind of taken, in one day. So I feel like we weren’t really done.”
In order for the business to maintain its former staffing of six — something important to Rojas Agurcia — the bakery couldn’t live on as a ghost concept, selling orders only for delivery or pick-up. The added walk-up sales a storefront brings were a necessary revenue stream.
“We needed somewhere where people can come up and buy pastries and cookies, because orders alone wouldn’t let me have six employees and be able to pay for it all,” Rojas Agurcia says.
She found that space in FreeMoreWest’s Station West development on Berryhill Road, thrilled to be able to remain on the West Side. The ability to start over in the new location brings more stability in many ways — for starters, the bakery is no longer in a flood zone. Electricity is more reliable — their old building was so old, staff had to make sure only one mixer was plugged in and running at a time.
“This space is definitely better for us because it was developed with us in mind,” Rojas Agurcia says. “All the things that we needed and wanted, [Redline Design Group] put that in there for us.”
A much bigger kitchen allows for more storage, while the front of the store has a small lounge space for customers to enjoy their pastries and coffee. There’s also a shared courtyard, which will be finished later this year. There, customers from the bakery and nearby coffee shop Backdrop can sit and enjoy their goods with room for kids to run free.
The Batch House will begin serving its “treats,” as Rojas Agurcia calls them, on Oct. 9. Expect classic Batchmaker goodies, including s’mores brownies, oatmeal cream pies, and chocolate birthday cake, with more creativity coming soon now that the team is settled in a new location.
“I never got the chance to have a rhythm because we opened and then it was such a crazy opening for three months and then COVID hits,” Rojas Agurcia says. “I was never able to take a step back and start being creative, which is what got me there.”
