The Way the Cookie Crumbles
Elmhurst resident Lisa Garber bakes love into Belden Avenue Bakery
“I’m Italian. My love for others comes through food.” A truer statement was never spoken by Lisa Garber, Elmhurst resident and owner of custom decorated cookie company Belden Avenue Bakery. Garber comes from a family who understands the importance of good cooking.
“From the time I was about nine years old, I grew up working in my family’s little diner on the outskirts of Chinatown,” said Garber. “That’s where I really learned the importance of food. To cook something for someone and then give it away is to give a piece of your heart away with it.”
It’s plain to see this mantra lives on in the care she takes with her business, the former Belden Avenue Bakery. The once-cottage industry home bakeshop recently took a step out the front door. Garber’s chocolate chunk cookie is going to the commercial market!
Garber started baking her cookies about eight years ago, but the endeavor took a new turn when her day job as a law office manager went remote during COVID. As she worked from home, Garber’s son, Broadway actor Anthony Lopez (the face of Elmhurst Magazine’s January issue), encouraged his mom to turn her custom cookie hobby into a business.
Lopez was a huge help to his mom as she got her feet wet. Ironically, when Lopez first moved to New York to pursue his Broadway dreams, he managed the social media for Tate’s Bakeshop. “Anthony knew so much about cookie marketing from his experience with Tate’s. His advice was indispensable when I was learning how to start my business,” Garber gratefully acknowledged.
Lopez also came up with the name Belden Avenue Bakery, after the street where he and Garber lived while he was growing up. He saw it as a way to tell their story.
In addition to her custom decorated sugar cookies, Garber has always been a fan of the usual suspects – oatmeal raisin, double chocolate chunk, Mexican and Italian Wedding, and shortbread cookies as well. Recently, she began to hone the perfect chocolate chunk cookie recipe. Her sister, Laura Cesario, recently sampled one and told Garber she should try to get it to the retail market.
“I was hesitant at first,” Garber said, laughing. “Too many episodes of Shark Tank, I guess!”
If life has serendipitous moments, this was Garber’s. Cesario had Garber bake a tray of cookies for a business meeting with marketing firm RR Donnelley, one of Cesario’s regular sales accounts. “My sister called me right after the meeting and told me they wanted to bring my chocolate chunk cookie to market!” Garber exclaimed, smiling. “I didn’t believe her, so I made her show me the email!”
Garber has been taking small steps on the road to the big market ever since. She has moved the bakeshop to a shared commercial kitchen space. A friend of Lopez’s is designing the packaging. The necessary paperwork has been filed with the IRS and FDA. Meetings with RR Donnelley are scheduled to go over merchandising and retail locations. “They have about 300 companies they do business with, so we are going to sit down and figure out the best sales approach,” Garber stated confidently.
Belden Avenue Bakery is definitely a family affair, as Garber’s other sister, Gina Lopez, is moving back to the area from Florida to help her market the business.
“I’m really proud of my business,” said Garber. Cookie decorating, she says, is her “zen” place. “I don’t play music or watch TV while I work,” she stated. “For me to sit and decorate my cookies is so balancing. It’s almost meditative.”
Other than her childhood experience in the family restaurant, Garber is entirely self-taught, save for a class she took a few years back at The French Pastry Institute. While it was only a few days long, she learned a lot about dough and the importance of curing it to let the flour hydrate and the flavors mix. “The tenderness and flavor is all in the dough,” she knows.
One of her favorite aspects of building this endeavor has been the local connections she has made. “My customers are absolutely the best, and I am honored to meet their kids and be a part of their big occasions and celebrations through my cookies. I love being in their lives.”
Garber still has her day job at the law firm but works fewer hours these days. “We represent people who get injured on the job,” she said. “Being in that line of work is really taxing, so to be able to make cookies and decorate them and have people be happy with something I have created just gives me so much joy, too.”
To view Garber’s custom cookie designs and place an order, visit @BeldenAvenue on Instagram and Facebook.com/BeldenBakes.
