Gourmet doughnut chain Lady Glaze has finally arrived in Cambridge, opening almost two years to the day after the first store launched in Kitchener’s Belmont Village and just over a year since they opened their third location in Guelph.
Finally because for CEO and co-owner Mark Brown, the company’s fourth shop represents a homecoming for the professionally-trained chef.
He grew up in Cambridge and attended Monsignor Doyle before heading off to Stratford Chefs School.
The company’s main bakery is also located on Franklin Boulevard. It's where most of their doughnuts are made before they get shipped out to stores in Stratford, Kitchener and Guelph to be filled and glazed.
“We’ve been eyeing a spot in Cambridge for a while and it took ages for us to find exactly what we needed,” he says.
“We finally made it happen.”
Over the last year, Brown says they toured through four possible sites before stumbling upon a “for rent” sign at 20 Grand where “in we jumped.”
Walkability, he says, was always the goal for choosing a where to set up shop and downtown Galt seemed like the best fit.
“It’s key for all our locations to be in that downtown kind of walking core,” he says.
Located just steps from Queen's Square, cafes, the school of architecture, and tucked in beside a flower shop with a small patio space out front, Brown says the location fits his idea of the “old school” vibe of walking into a Parisian-style bakery.
So, which city has the most doughnut fans and what flavours do they like?
Brown said every city is slightly different and part of that unique culture is reflected what customers like to indulge in.
The chain’s busiest location, for instance, is in a huge vegan town so the cocoa-butter enriched options tend to steal the show in the Royal City.
Stratford customers are really digging the gluten-free options, he says.
“We’re kind of just waiting to see what happens in the Cambridge store. We’ve already seen it in the way people buy.”
Each store manager is also from the communities they serve, so they’re able to build a rapport with customers and kick ideas back to the bakery.
It helps that each store can make exactly what they need if they find a specific flavour moves particularly well, he says.
If there's any doubt about the popularity of the humble doughnut, Lady Glaze proves that notion wrong.
The first location opened just a few months before everything shut down and managed to expand at a time when many businesses were closing for good.
Brown says the freshly-made gourmet doughnut trend had been growing for a few years before the pandemic gave an boost to sales as people sought out comfort foods.
“We’re Canadians, we love doughnuts and we like having a couple of options,” he says.
Some of those options on the current menu include the Honey Dip, described as a "classic ring, hand-dipped in honey glaze with bee pollen and caramelized honey sponge toffee."
Then there's the Butterfield Blondie, a traditiional ring doughnut topped with a "butterscotch glaze, brown butter blondie, buttercream, and butterfinger crunch, all drizzled with chocolate."
Being creative with ingredients is natural for the Stratford chef school grad who went on to do his apprenticeship at Langdon Hall.
From there, he worked for Charcoal Group locally, then off to Toronto, Ottawa, New York City and Rome before ending up back in the region.
During his development as a chef, Brown says his affinity for dough grew, starting with pizza dough and evolving into all manner of baked breads and pastries.
In chefs school, Brown says there was a heavy focus on "the scratch component" and making everything from ingredients that are as locally-sourced and wholesome as possible.
“I was really kind of excited to move home and be able to do that in the region I grew up in,” Brown says.
When he and co-founder Trudy Koen found a spot in Belmont Village that “screamed doughnut shop,” it was the history of the area that solidified their decision to open there.
Before Tim Hortons essentially wiped out their business with the introduction of the muffin, the Belmont Village Donut Queen was the most popular place on the strip. Brown says some of their Kitchener customers still get nostalgic about the Donut Queen connection.
While primarily offering sweet doughnuts, Brown says they'll occasionally offer some savoury options for the adventurous doughnut connoisseur.
Those creations have included an "everything" cream cheese bagel, a doughnut featuring beet and goat cheese, and others featuring Portuguese chourico sausage, aged cheddar, and one with a sherry glaze and a rich cracker crunch.
The menu changes every month, leaving a lot of regular customers waiting for their favourites to make their return.
Otherwise, Brown says, the menu would simply get too big.
They also try to craft their offerings to be as seasonal as possible.
Jelly doughnuts, for instance, are usually a spring and summer offering, when fresh berries are abundant.
With Hanukkah coming up, that holiday's traditional jelly-filled flour doughnut will likely make it back on the menu.
Brown says they developed relationships with farmers after opening a booth at the St. Jacob's Farmers' Market when COVID hit.
They kept the market booth going, glazing all their doughnuts at the Kitchener store and shipping them out to help with sales, until things settled down.
With brick and mortar operations back in full operation, local farmers' markets continue to be a go-to source for fresh ingredients.
Of course, buying all local ingredients for pastry can be a challenge, Brown says, especially since lemons, vanilla and sugar are part of nearly every recipe.
But for the fruit, eggs and butter they use, it's a priority.
"It's kind of like how I was trained."
