It takes more than flour to make a cake, and David Warner knows it takes more than kitchen skills to operate a successful bakery.
He’s been doing it since 1988, when he bought an established enterprise and later renamed it Bread and Cakes Bakery.
“I didn’t know the first thing about baking” Warner said. “I was an accountant before that.”
Originally from Connecticut, Warner was working for American Motor Inns when it opened Frenchman’s Reef Hotel in 1973, and he was sent to St. Thomas to do some internal auditing. He worked there until 1974.
As he remembers it, he was on his way to the airport to fly back to the mainland when he stopped for a drink at the Island Beachcomber and was offered another accounting job. He liked the island and he wanted to stay, so he accepted the offer. A few years later he was running his own accounting business, but he was dreaming of getting into retail. That’s when the former Bachman’s Bakery came up for sale and he made the move.
Running a bake shop and catering firm “is like putting on a Broadway show,” Warner says. Or, to use another analogy, it’s like putting out a daily newspaper. “Every morning you have to get everything off the press.” If anything doesn’t happen on schedule, the whole operation falters.
“You have to be organized,” Warner said.
The Bread and Cakes shop in Wheatley Center opens at 5 a.m. six days a week; it closes at 7 p.m. Monday-Friday and at 6 p.m. on Saturday. “The bakers start baking at 8” at night, and the cycle repeats. In the meantime, Warner is managing deliveries, ordering supplies, coordinating maintenance of the equipment and, in short, running a small business.
He said he has learned a bit about baking, too, and occasionally helps out in the kitchen in a pinch, but, he quickly adds, “I’m assisting … I’m not a baker … Being a professional baker’s like being an artist.”
You aren’t just following a recipe; you’re assessing things as diverse as the day’s humidity and the density of the flour.
The shop sells an array of breakfast sweets, as well as numerous kinds of bread, rolls and pastries. A favorite, Warner said, are personalized birthday cakes.
In the 26 years he’s run the bakery, Warner said he has kept “all the same bakers, and most of the same employees – some have retired.” Currently there are a dozen employees; there were double that when he started, but that was when there were two outlets. Hurricane Marilyn destroyed the Four Winds shop in 1995.
Warner said the past couple of years have been especially challenging. Gasoline and electricity costs are squeezing small businesses, and other costs keep rising too. A bag of flour that cost $20 when he started, now costs $30, and he can only pass on a certain amount of that increase to his customers. “You can’t charge $4 for a donut.”
Still, he said, “We try to donate as much to the community as possible.” One beneficiary is Bethlehem House Shelter for the homeless. “Everything (that wasn’t sold) goes to them at the end of the day.”
The bakery also supports the Family Resource Center’s annual cake sale, various school activities including the annual spelling bee, and local non-profit groups. Warner donated financial services to help establish the Women’s Resource Center (now the Family Resource Center.)
He is perhaps best known for founding the Caribbean Support Network, which helps provide medications and support to patients with HIV-AIDS and their families.
Warner said a lot of his friends have retired, but he’s in no hurry to do that, because “this gives me a purpose.”
He would, however, like to see some changes.
“There’s political freedom in St. Thomas, but there doesn’t seem to be much economic freedom in St. Thomas anymore,” he said. “The small businesses are carrying the burden … It’s controversy that gets the publicity,” while attempts to improve things are little noticed.
“It’s a tendency for the government to control instead of create solutions,” he added. “If you don’t create wealth, you’re not going to have any distribution of the wealth.”
He said he hopes the new administration will bring a change in attitude and that Governor-elect Kenneth Mapp will open discussions with retailers and involve small business people in government-private sector committees and forums.
