Today we’d like to introduce you to Keegan Rodgers.
Hi Keegan , thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I started baking when I was nine, standing on a stool next to my Granny in her kitchen, and that’s really where all of this began. I spent the next several decades working in scratch bakeries around northern Michigan, Memphis, Detroit, and Ann Arbor, picking up everything I could about the craft along the way. At one point life knocked me down pretty hard, and I had to rebuild almost everything, myself included. I made a decision that I was done waiting and finally went after the thing I’d loved since I was a kid. I enrolled at Schoolcraft College for culinary school, and when my Granny passed, I used what she left me along with my own retirement savings to buy a small lakeside bakery in Chelsea. No investors, no outside money, just credit cards and plain stubbornness. We opened in January 2019, and every year since I’ve been teaching people that baking isn’t some mysterious talent you’re born with. It’s chemistry. It’s physics. Once you understand why something works, you can do it too, and that belief still gets me out of bed every morning.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It hasn’t been smooth, no. I hit a really rough patch in 2009 and had to rebuild my whole life from nothing, which meant moving back in with my dad and starting over with no money and no business experience. When I finally decided to open my own place, I did it with credit cards and my Granny’s inheritance instead of investors, so every slow month hit hard and there was no cushion to fall back on. We opened in January 2019, and about a year later the pandemic showed up and tried to take the whole thing down. Then ingredient prices spiked and just about doubled overnight, and I had to decide how much of that to absorb instead of passing it on to customers who were struggling too. None of it broke us. If anything it taught me that a bakery built on real ingredients and honest pricing can survive almost anything as long as you refuse to cut corners.
As you know, we’re big fans of The Lakehouse Bakery. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
We’re a small batch bakery in Chelsea that makes everything from scratch, real ingredients, no shortcuts, no mystery mixes. Our bread, cakes, cookies, and pastries come out of the same kitchen where we teach, because showing people the actual science behind baking matters as much to us as selling them a good cookie. We run twenty three hands on classes a year at the bakery, September through May, plus classes at libraries and community centers all over the region. They are open to anybody, and most of the people who take them have never baked seriously in their lives. The schedule is at thelakehousebakery.com. Beyond the retail counter we supply over ten wholesale accounts around Mid Michigan and make our own line of gourmet dessert sauces in house. What sets us apart is pretty simple. Most bakeries turn down the big weird orders, the two hundred pie catering request, the last minute wedding cake save. We say yes and figure it out. We tell people exactly what is in everything and exactly who made it, which sounds obvious and is rare in this business. What we are proudest of is twenty percent year over year growth, earned one order at a time, with nobody’s money but our own. We want people to know that when they walk in here, they’re getting the real thing, made by people who actually know and care why it works.
What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
The biggest lesson for me is that most of what people call the rules were never really rules to begin with, they were just habits nobody questioned. I spent years assuming certain things about baking were sacred because that’s what I was taught, until I actually learned the chemistry behind it and realized half of it was nonsense. That lesson ended up applying to way more than baking. When I hit rock bottom back in 2009, I had to relearn it about my own life too, that the rules I thought I had to follow about how to rebuild or what a real career was supposed to look like were mostly just fear talking. Once you understand why something works instead of just following along because that’s how it’s always been done, you get to make your own decisions with actual confidence. That’s true in a kitchen, and it’s true everywhere else.
Pricing:
- Strawberry Preserves, $8.95
- Salted Caramel Sauce, $8.95 (best seller)
- Hands on Classes $85
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.thelakehousebakery.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thelakehousebakery/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thelakehousebakerychelsea/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-lakehouse-bakery-chelsea
