Sweet Success

25 YEARS AGO, Joanne Chang walked the streets of Boston and Cambridge scouting neighborhoods and dreaming of opening a bakery. Now, she serves sweet sticky buns and flavorful breads from 10 different locations of Flour Bakery + Cafe, dishes out piping hot Chinese small plates at Myers + Chang, and has published five cookbooks.

Chang never anticipated this kind of expansion and celebrity when she opened the first Flour Bakery in the South End.

“I lived upstairs and baked downstairs. It really was an extension of my home,” says Chang. “When I take a step back and look at what Flour has become, I’m a little bit shell shocked, like, how the heck did this happen?”

But Flour was clearly special from the start. The expansion began when some of Chang’s devoted staff were searching for growth opportunities. Not wanting to lose such a talented team, Chang opened new locations and created new positions. That cycle continued in an effort to keep Flour employees in the family. Several of her current team members have been with Flour for more than 20 years.

Community is an essential part of the core five missions of the business. Those missions include making great food, giving warm and welcoming service, giving back to the neighborhood, running an efficient and profitable business and making Flour great for both guests and team members. Chang works hard to foster that positive environment within the staff, but also in the neighborhoods Flour serves.

“We are part of a community; we are part of a neighborhood that has welcomed us,” says Chang. “The first bakery was successful almost immediately, and I recognized very quickly that I couldn’t have continued to operate the bakery if it weren’t for the massive support of every neighbor and every business around us.”

When the opportunity to open an outpost in the heart of Boston Common arose, Chang couldn’t refuse. In many ways, this new location in the former Earl of Sandwich space is a culmination of Flour’s 25 years. It’s an opportunity to serve Bostonians at the very core of the city.

“We’ve always talked about being a neighborhood bakery,” says Chang. “This is the oldest public park in America, and it’s essentially a neighborhood park for Boston.”

Crowd favorites from Flour’s menu, like the egg sandwich and the banana bread, can be found at its Boston Common location. But it’s the first of the Flour bakeries to have special site-specific items on the menu year-round. These include an all-beef hot dog on a house-made milk bread roll and creamy soft-serve ice cream.

Hungry park-goers can also order the Embrace morning bun, a treat inspired by the Embrace statue that features delicate twists of brioche babka twists wrapped together in a cinnamon chai coating. All profits go to The Boston Foundation and the Embrace Boston racial justice organization.

THE MOM TEST

As with all Flour bakeries, quality is held to the highest possible standard. “It’s something we call the mom test,” says Chang. “We’re making sure that every single piece of food is something that we would present to our moms.”

Chang plans to open the next location of Flour in the Longwood neighborhood in January. She’s also releasing a new cookbook, “The Joy of Cookies,” next year. These achievements join a long list, including two James Beard Awards and an appearance on Food Network’s “Throwdown! with Bobby Flay,” where her sticky buns beat out his for the win.

Not only did Chang never expect to open multiple locations of Flour, she never expected to be a chef at all. She graduated from Harvard College with degrees in applied mathematics and economics and worked as a management consultant. But her heart was always in baking. When she took the plunge into the culinary world, she honed her skills in the high-end kitchens of restaurants like Biba in Boston and Payard Patisserie and Bistro in New York City.

GROWING WITH CHARM

Chang credits her husband and business partner, Christopher Myers, with helping grow Flour to what it is today. His experience in the restaurant industry helped show her how the bakery could expand while retaining its charm and quality.

“I often think that he doesn’t get enough credit. If it weren’t for him, I would still have just one bakery and be in the South End living upstairs. And it would be lovely, but it wouldn’t be what we have today,” says Chang.

Love is at the heart of Chang’s success. Her and Myers’ love grew Flour to new heights. Her love of Boston brought flaky pastries and mile-high sandwiches to every corner of the city. And it’s love that she hopes to instill in diners when they visit.

“I really want everyone to leave happier than they came in,” says Chang. “I think the act of connecting with people is so powerful, and so I hope that when people leave, they feel seen. That’s our way of making the world a sweeter place.”