The Great C-Store Bake Off

The United States’ c-store industry is going all in on fresh baked goods—from everywhere, it seems.

The United States’ c-store industry is going all in on fresh baked goods—from everywhere, it seems.

America loves baked goods, and like many things that Americans love, they’ve been around since pre-Colonial times. European settlers brought over many storied baking techniques, and they wasted little time firing up their brick and stone ovens once they landed on North American shores.

English settlers popularized pies and custards. The French were partial to tarts and choix pastry, the dough in cream puffs and eclairs. Germans introduced pretzels, strudels, and stollen. We can thank the Dutch for cookies (koekjes) and doughnuts (olykoeks):

The new landscape and what grew there had an immediate impact on the recipe of settlers. With every ingredient at the time being farm (or field) to table, how could it not? Apple and cherry stollen, cornmeal for cornbread, and that Thanksgiving favorite, pumpkin pie: new variations of old baked treats, locally sourced, one and all.

Retail baking outlets didn’t take long to follow. Persons & Sons Bakery of Newburyport, Massachusetts was founded in 1792 and is usually considered the first commercial bakery in the U.S. As their product line emphasized biscuits and crackers from the beginning, it only makes sense that they eventually evolved into what we know today as Nabisco.

The oldest continuously operating U.S. bake shop, Winkler Bakery, in Old Salem, North Carolina, was founded in 1807. It still uses the same wood fired ovens it did when it opened. Colonial customers would help themselves to Moravian spiced cookies, gingerbread, rosemary bread, and Moravian spiced bread (pictured below), most of which you can still purchase today.

Now the tradition of fine, fresh in-store baked goods may not be synonymous with the convenience store industry, but that began changing in earnest in the 2010’s when chains like Kwik Trip, Casey’s and Wawa began baking items in-house or at centralized baking facilities capable of delivering fresh goods to the site the same day.[1]

Any number of third parties cropped up at about the same time to provide their own spin on fresh bakery food service, such as McLane Distributors’ Better Case Bakery Program. But the independent c-stores tend to have an approach that’s a little less mainstream. Here are some examples.

Corner Post Convenience in Watford City, North Dakota leads off the list providing an example of how an independent convenience store can use its artisanal baking operation to get people in the store. “Stuffed muffins” come filled with cream cheese, fresh preserves, chocolate ganache, and other options. Corner Post makes its own pizza dough, too.

Weikel’s Bakery does business in five related c-stores across South Eastern Texas, an authentic Czech bakery that specializes in and promotes its kolaches (pictured below) heavily. Think of it as an Eastern European cousin of what a lot of people call the Danish, but with softer dough. These stores also offer an impressive Foodservice component with a full deli and breakfast, including pigs in a blanket wrapped and baked with homemade pancakes.

The Bakery at French Market Express in Natchitoches, Louisiana, the heart of Cajun country, puts their own distinctive spin on the in-store bakery. The Yam cake is what gets a lot of the attention here, but don’t overlook their homemade breading for hush puppies, shrimp, and other fresh seafood choices. Seafood is king here.

El Lucero Market in Lodi, California, our last featured bakery, is an example of a non-European bakery that has flourished while operating out of a true convenience store. The Mexican style panadería offers pan dulce, including conchas, cuernitos, and empanadas, all made fresh daily. The store also includes a deli with fresh made burritos, tamales, and other grab-and-go items.

If you are a c-store operator building up your bakery service, you have more options than ever to consider: in-store baking, using a third party baking company, or buying from a local vendor. This means you may be juggling different packaging and different barcodes, PLUs, etc. When that happens, you need something that can bring all item sales activity together into one standardized management view, to make it easy to track performance, anticipate future trends, or turn on a dime when vendors change.

This kind of speed and control just isn’t possible today without back office software. SSCS’ Computerized Daily Book was built for this purpose, no matter how large or diverse the merchandise you’re selling. Don’t take a half-baked approach to inventory management—it deserves better! Give us a call at (800) 9172-7727 and we can talk about it.

[1] NACS Magazine, “What’s Inside the Bakery Case?” March 2025.