“Keep innovating and avoid getting stuck in a routine”
C
osteaux French Bakery in Healdsburg, Calif., is celebrating its 100th anniversary and the little local bread shop and café threw quite a bash.
There were accordions. There were berets. And there were two generations of the Seppi family present.
Some of the Seppis in attendance included current owner and president Will Seppi, who has run the bakery since 2004, as well as his parents, Karl and Nancy, who bought the bakery in 1981 and basically kept it afloat.
Even though the Seppis didn't start the bakery — that was Otavia and Ricardo Cassaza and Joe Tignoli, way back in 1923 — over the last 40 years the Seppi family has made the place their own.
“Today this is our family's business, but when my parents bought it, we were taking over another family's business,” says Will Seppi. “Bakeries are community hubs where people come together to celebrate life events and day-to-day interactions. The way I see it, our family has continued a legacy of a community business. It's an honor to be the ones championing and investing in this for so long.”
The Seppis certainly have transformed the business from what it once was.
When Karl and Nancy bought the bakery, it was located next door, in what is a real estate office today. Ten years later, the older Seppis purchased the current building and moved the entire operation one door closer to the Wine Country city's inviting plaza.
Later, when Will took over, things really got interesting. During his first month on the job, Costeaux (in conjunction with a local farmers' market and a nearby high school) baked a 418-pound pumpkin pie, a Guinness World Record for what was, at that time, the largest pumpkin pie ever recorded.
The bakery has continued to grow from there. In the last decade alone, Will Seppi has overseen an expansion that added three storefronts and a brand-new, $6 million off-site production facility.
What's more, Costeaux now has roughly 125 employees, up from maybe five or six in 1981.
Will Seppi says most of this diversification has been fueled by external factors such as changes to the product line and the burgeoning tourism industry in and around the bakery's home county. Another driving force: resistance to complacency.
“Any family business owner will tell you it's important to keep innovating and avoid getting stuck in a routine,” he says. “For more than four decades my family has given [this brand] everything we could. We're happy to celebrate the first 100 years. Now we're working on setting the place up for the next hundred.”
Matt Villano is a freelance writer based in Healdsburg, Calif.
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