Storehouse Bakery serves as a ministry by owner Goforth

From a 1,600-square-foot space, Brenda Goforth bakes treats that draw in customers and help her church.

Storehouse Bakery, 3661 W. Sunshine St., was founded in 2008 and got its start with Goforth – the owner and sole employee – selling baked goods out of Church on the Rock, where her husband works as pastor. A few months after getting started, Goforth moved the business to its current home near Sunshine Street and West Bypass.

Her overhead is low, she says, because she doesn’t draw a salary and she only pays $850 a month for the leased space.

But the low-cost approach is in line with her goal. All of the bakery’s proceeds go to Church on the Rock, providing funding for needs such as roughly $7,000 in renovations to its building, 2323 W. Grand St.

“I look at it as a ministry for the church,” she said. “There’s nothing else I’d rather be doing.”

Storehouse Bakery’s menu includes cakes, pies, cookies and pastries.

While Goforth managed a local gourmet bakery called Edibly Yours about 20 years ago, she learned much of what she knows about baking as a child.

“I was always around my grandma in the kitchen,” Goforth said. “She had 13 kids, and we’d go over every weekend, and she would make the biggest dinners, and I was just always under her feet.”

Perhaps because of her grandmother’s influence, Goforth’s treats strike a chord with customers such as Cindy Burks, a physician liaison with St. John’s Home and Hospice Care.

“A lot of her things taste like my mother’s home-cooked cookies and little cookie bars,” said Burks, a frequent customer who often buys Storehouse Bakery goods for the doctors and nurses with whom she works.

Goforth managed Edibly Yours for about eight years but left the job to open a lawn service with her husband.

She found, however, that she missed the creativity that comes with running a bakery and decided to open her own shop.

“I just missed making a product that people enjoyed,” she said.

Goforth gets an early start each workday, heading to the bakery at 4:30 a.m., and Storehouse is open 7 a.m.–4 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Goforth said her most popular item is probably her cinnamon rolls, but if a customer wants something that’s not on the menu or already in the bakery case for walk-in customers, she’s open to special requests.

“If it’s simple and I can make it, I’ll do it,” said Goforth, who declined to disclose annual revenues.

Amy McGehee, owner of Amycakes bakery, 308 W. McDaniel St., said there’s plenty of demand for locally owned bakeries in the Ozarks.

“We’ve been open a little more than a year and I’d say we’re probably doing twice as much business as we were a year ago,” she said, though she declined to disclose specifics. “Part of that, I’m sure, is us growing as a business and getting our name out, but I think that baked goods are something that people still want.”

Among the benefits of being a locally owned bakery is the ability to monitor quality.

“I see every product that goes out,” McGehee said. “I’m decorating every cake that goes out and one of my two employees is making that cake from scratch right in front of me so I can know that everything is of high quality and there’s no question.”

Goforth said she, too, bakes everything from scratch so that she can make sure her goods look and taste the way she wants.

“When you eat something, to me, it always tastes better if it looks good,” she said. “I just think presentation is 90 percent of your sale in a bakery.”

Burks said the effort Goforth puts into her products don’t go unnoticed.  

“Presentation is very important … and she’s very accommodating,” Burks said. “I have one clinic where I’ve been told I don’t walk in the door unless I bring some of Brenda’s cookies.”[[In-content Ad]]