ThisWeek Columbus wrote a fabulous article on Pattycake’s green business practices and our nomination for a SWACO Emerald Award in the small business category. Check out the article below!
xo sarah + pattycake
‘Green’ honor would be icing on the cupcake
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 01:02 AM
By KEVIN PARKS
ThisWeek Community Newspapers
BY ADAM CAIRNS/THISWEEK
(Top) Owner Jennie Scheinbach recently learned that her business, Pattycake Bakery, 3009 N. High St., was nominated for a SWACO Emerald Award for its green operation. The bakery specializes in vegan and organic cakes, cupcakes and cookies. 
(Bottom) Using biodegradable terraphane bags, recycled paper labels and vegan glues, Shannon Barnette packages Marry Me Muffins.
When Pattycake Vegan Bakery became simply Pattycake Bakery a few years ago, it didn’t cease to be a vegan bakery.
The business just no longer had a name that automatically constricted the customer base.
“It turned off more people than it attracted,” owner Jennie Scheinbach acknowledged. “We’ve found if we can get it in their mouths, we’ve got them.”
The change in name not only didn’t change the vegan nature of the operation at 3009 N. High St., a short walk from Scheinbach’s Clintonville home, it also didn’t at all alter the mindset she had in opening the bakery six years ago this month — namely, to sell sweet treats that are dairy- and egg-free and to have as modest an impact on the planet as possible.
At first, it wasn’t all that easy being “green.”
Now it’s easier, but more expensive, Scheinbach said. The availability of compostable, biodegradable and recyclable materials has increased, but they do add to the cost of doing business, she said.
It’s a cost Scheinbach said she’s willing to bear.
“You’re paying now or paying later, like globally,” she said last week. “I feel willing as a business to pay that cost so my children and the community at large don’t have to later.”
Paying that cost paid off in September 2009 when Baking Management magazine presented Pattycake Bakery with an “Innovation Award” for the packaging used for the treats sold at the store and other outlets.
“For us, that was huge,” Scheinbach said last week. “I feel really proud of it.”
The Clintonville bakery is now in the running for another environmental honor, a 2011 Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio Emerald Award. Pattycake Bakery was nominated in the small business category by marketing director Sarah Bryant.
“The idea of ‘waste’ is almost foreign to Pattycake Bakery,” Bryant wrote. “Strong recycling and composting efforts result in no more than one household container of trash per week. Other ‘green’ initiatives include the reuse of cardboard beer boxes to pack wholesale orders, the use all-natural glue for attaching company labels (printed with soy ink on 100-percent recycled paper) and the delivery of all central city orders via bike. In addition, most of the staff arrives to work on foot, by bus or by bike. Internally, Pattycake uses entirely ‘green’ cleaning products, compact fluorescent lighting and compostable cups, plates and bags that dissolve within 90 days. The bakery was one of the first businesses approved as a city of Columbus Green Spot.”
Scheinbach, who termed the other nominees in the category “awesome,” said the winner of the honor won’t be known until the SWACO Emerald Awards luncheon on Tuesday, May 17, at Ohio State University’s Ohio Union.
“I’m a sweets person,” Scheinbach said of what led her to create Pattycake Bakery. “I’ve been baking since I was a kid. When you make it yourself, it tastes better.”
What would become Pattycake was launched in the Tibet Road kitchen of Scheinbach’s mother shortly after Scheinbach graduated from college with a degree in sociology. She was planning to pursue a Ph.D. in order to teach and do research, but had a new baby and a 4-year-old at the time and didn’t want to leave them, so she turned to baking to bring in some money.
After about eight months, Scheinbach said, she began to see the need to expand.
“There’s only so much you can do in a home oven,” she said. “I just could not keep up. It was either quit or move out of the house.
“It just seemed like this was working, why not keep trying?”
When a deli and carryout opened on North High Street in a former hairdresser’s shop, Scheinbach said that she gave it six months.
“That’s going to be my space,” she recalls telling herself.
When, as she had predicted, the business failed, Pattycake Bakery moved in.
“It just was right from the beginning,” she said.
For Scheinbach, the goal in running Pattycake Bakery, aside from turning a profit and taking care of the 13 or so employees, is to have the “smallest carbon footprint you can get.”
“Any time we have extra money, I’m thinking about how can we ‘green’ things,” Scheinbach said.
