Today we’d like to introduce you to Bill and Jessica Gleespen.
Hi Bill and Jessica, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Gleehead Baking Company was born before the pandemic but really took off for us during the Covid-19 quarantine in 2020. I (Jessica) am originally from Wyandotte, Michigan. I started baking all the way back in 2005 when I began working the overnight bread mixing shift at Zingerman’s Bakehouse during college. I quickly fell in love with every aspect of baking, the precision and care that it took and how incredible it felt to mix a few basic ingredients together and come back to find a loaf of bread the next day. I continued my career at Whole Foods Market, where I gained valuable management and scratch pastry experience. After helping to open a few bakeries for WFM and a head baking position in Livonia, I decided to try opening my own cottage food bakery in 2017, specializing in French macarons. I continued baking for the Ypsilanti Farmers Market and specialty craft shows until 2019, when I had to return to the workforce for health insurance. Bill is a Chelsea, Michigan native who studied at WCC and Eastern Michigan University, graduating with a certificate in Audio Production and a degree in Business Entrepreneurship. He mainly worked as an audio engineer for live concerts up until March of 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic rendered him career-less basically overnight. As we pondered what to do next and quarantined like much of the rest of the world, Bill started trying his hand at baking. He quickly realized that he enjoyed the hobby and that he had a real knack for it, we started working together to come up with some recipes for bread that we liked, and one of our most popular products, the English Muffin Loaf, was born. We started selling through Growing Hope’s Online Farmers Market and expanded our products to include soft baked cookies, cinnamon and specialty sweet rolls, and gourmet crackers. Once the pandemic eased and farmers’ markets began to happen in person again, Bill took the baking and selling helm and began setting up weekly at Ypsilanti’s Tuesday market and occasionally on Saturdays. In 2021, he joined the Northville Farmers market on Thursday mornings and has built a loyal and valued customer base. The 2022 season recently ended, and we are looking forward to next year.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has been a fairly smooth road until this point, the challenges of inflation on ingredient and packaging cost notwithstanding. We are currently experiencing some growing pains, particularly concerning the $25,000 cap on revenue through the Cottage Food Law. We are at the point that we would like to expand our business but finding financing and being able to prove profitability is difficult with the current limitations. The commercial real estate market is also proving incredibly difficult to navigate.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next, you can tell us a bit more about your business?
We are a married baking team specializing in bread, cinnamon and specialty rolls, scones, soft baked cookies, French Macarons, and gourmet crackers that we call ‘Thinscotti”. We make everything from scratch and by hand, including the jams and icings for our unique rotating sweet roll flavors and the buttercreams and fillings for the macarons. We make our scones 8 at a time by hand using Guernsey buttermilk- the Rosemary Goat Cheese is probably our best seller. I’d say were most known for our English Muffin Bread and gourmet crackers- some customers can’t go more than a week without them. What sets us apart is our dedication to personal, meaningful customer service, our accessible prices, and our baking skills and experience. We’re really proud of all of our products. We eat our own bread nearly every day and care a lot about flavor- if something is just ‘ok’ and doesn’t really bowl us over, we go back to the drawing board. We really want our products to be affordable and accessible to people with all sorts of tastes and dietary needs. We are committed to the quality of what we bake and encourage customers who are ever less than satisfied to reach out to us so that we can make it right. We’d like readers to know that we’ll be popping up this winter in Ypsilanti at Go! Ice Cream where I (Jessica) work as the kitchen manager and who we frequently collaborate with, and The Ypsilanti Winter Artisan Market at the Depot Town Freight House on December 11th and 18th from 10-4. We are also planning to join the Northville and Farmington Farmers markets in 2023 and increase our local pick-up and delivery business.
We love surprises, fun facts, and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
The name for our bakery came from combining our last names, Jessica Whitehead and Bill Gleespen.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @gleeheadbaking
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/GleeheadBakingCo
