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What did Karl Seppi, a professional golf instructor, and his wife, Nancy, know about running a retail bakery? Admittedly, not a lot. But that did not deter the couple who saw potential in Costeaux French Bakery, a Healdsburg, Calif. institution since 1923. They purchased the bakery in 1981.

“Karl wanted to buy the bakery, and I thought he was crazy,” Nancy says. The former owner, a French baker named John Costeaux, worked with Karl to teach him how to bake. It was a typical mom-and-pop shop—Karl ran production and Nancy, with only a couple employees, was in charge of the front of the store.

In 1989, they purchased the building next door and tripled the size of the bakery to 4,500 sq. ft. With the additional space, they added a deli. Karl and Nancy were involved in the day-to-day operations of the business until their son, William, came on board as general manager in 2004.

“After 23 years, we were ready for a new chapter,” Nancy says. “We still have a role in the bakery, but we don't have to be here everyday anymore. Will came back and brought in new ideas.”

Opposite: William Seppi, general manager of Costeaux French Bakery; above: The bakery’s redesigned display area with a reduced footprint to focus on more profitable items.

Photo by Rick Tang

Will, who earned an accounting degree from Villanova University and had spent the years following college working in that field, knew the only option was to create a business structure that would allow the bakery to expand. “I assessed everything and tried to figure out where we needed to go,” Will says.

Will's first task was to overhaul the bakery's product line, beginning with pastry. He hired a pastry chef, and they took a hard look at the products—improving or removing as necessary. The bakery had some core items that could not be removed from the menu, such as the lemon curd tart, an English shortbread crust filled with scratch-made lemon curd; the caramel macadamia nut tart, toasted macadamia nuts embedded in scratch-made caramel and topped with ganache; and the triple chocolate mousse, a chocolate cookie crumb crust with three layers of mousse—dark chocolate, milk chocolate and white chocolate—topped with a handmade chocolate rose.

The pastry overhaul took about a year and new products included the princess cake, a three-layer chiffon cake filled with Bavarian custard, raspberry conserve and whipped cream enrobed in marzipan; and tiramisu, two layers of white chiffon cake soaked with espresso and Kahlua, filled with a mascarpone, rum and amaretto zabaglione and topped with whipped cream and cocoa.

Overhaul of cafe

The next step was the café, which serves both breakfast and lunch items. A new chef overhauled the café menu and processes. The only stipulation was that the quiche and French onion soup could not be tinkered with—all else was fair game. A sit-down service was instituted with customers ordering and being served at café tables instead of ordering at the counter as they had previously.

The new production facility allowed the bakery to add equipment to improve efficiencies, but some production must still be done by hand to maintain quality.

Photo by Rick Tang

The new café menu items were created to showcase the bakery's bread as much as possible. “When the head cook and I sit down to do the menus, that's one thing we look at, the bread component,” Will says. “For instance, you don't see pancakes on our menu, but we offer a very good French toast. We're cognizant of putting the right bread with the right ingredients and keeping the menu very simple.”

The menu changes every four to six months, and with its location in Northern California, Costeaux has access to an abundance of fresh ingredients to help keep product quality high.

The third step in the product overhaul was bread. Long fermentation breads were something the bakery wanted to produce, but simply lacked the room. One of the plans Will made when he was brought on as general manager was to find a separate production facility, which would enable the bakery to expand its bread sales and wholesale accounts.