Wentworth + Fenn, the bakery from pastry chef Samantha Allen, has moved in to a commercial kitchen. Wentworth + Fenn makes custom cakes, wedding cakes, macarons, and pastries, as well as sells baked goods and coffee from a Shasta camper she calls Selma.

The 1,500-square-foot commercial space in Gibson Mill — a serious upgrade from Allen’s certified home kitchen — will enable her to expand production. Wentworth + Fenn’s mobile camper, Selma, is booked every weekend between now and late August. Custom orders are coming in more rapidly, and Allen said her kitchen at home just couldn’t handle the volume.

“We needed somewhere desperately to do production,” she says. “I literally looked everywhere and couldn’t find anything that was suitable or made sense for us.”

Then she got a call from a representative for Gibson Mill’s upcoming food hall, and asked him about a kitchen space. There was an old locker and shower room from the mill that was a wide-open space with working floor drains and enough hot water supply to run a commercial kitchen.

“It’s a little bit obscure, but that’s okay because I’m a little bit obscure,” Allen says with a laugh, saying before a paint job and some upgrades the space looked like something out of the Saw films. Wentworth + Fenn’s lease on the space began April 1.

The pastry camper is no longer holding down a specific location each week; when it launched, Selma was in Plaza Midwood on Wednesdays and Fridays. You can check out the camper’s schedule on the Wentworth + Fenn website. Allen says a brick-and-mortar location is in the plans for sometime in the future, but first she needs to hire someone to help expand the bakery’s production. An additional baker will allow the camper to be out at more events, and the business to accept more custom orders.

When Gibson Mill’s food hall opens, Wentworth + Fenn’s pastries will be available there as well, whether through another vendor who sells the products or from Selma, parked out front with the food trucks.

“We’ll definitely be one of the companies that’ll be in Gibson, which is great because anything we can do to support them — they’ve been nothing but kind to us.” —Kristen Wile

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