Three decades later, Klinger's Bread celebrates long shelf life as bakery, cafe
This look at Klinger’s Bread Co. is the latest in a series of profiles by the Burlington Free Press on long-standing restaurants in Chittenden County. How do restaurants that date to the 20th century remain relevant, while continuing to do the things that have given them such staying power?
SOUTH BURLINGTON – The owners of Klinger’s Bread Co. came to the business 30 years ago with unusual credentials for people in charge of a bakery.
Dave Klingebiel was a manager for General Electric in Hudson Falls, New York. His wife, Judy Klingebiel, worked as a certified public accountant. Dave’s brother, Ed Klingebiel, was a dentist in Colchester.
“We never made bread before,” according to Judy.
“I liked bread, that was about it,” Ed said.
They did, however, provide the business brains behind bread created by a renowned baker who licensed his recipes to shops across the United States. The bread caught on almost immediately after the Klingebiels opened Klinger’s Bread Co. in a warehouse-like space off the beaten commercial path on Farrell Street in South Burlington.
The Klingebiels are celebrating the 30th anniversary of Klinger’s bakery and café this month. The business began in August 1993 in a cavernous room that previously housed a telephone-repair business, adjacent to a now-departed manufacturing site for Blodgett Oven. A toy store opened in the building, then closed. A Domino’s pizza joint and a dance studio now occupy space near Klinger’s.
“There’s businesses that come and go,” Ed Klingebiel said. “And we stay.”
Born in an accounting office
The idea for Klinger’s Bread Co. began in an accounting office.
“I instigated most of it,” Judy Klingebiel said.
One of her clients was a baker and pastry chef who was licensing his bread recipes to bakeries across the country. Michael London and his wife, Wendy, baked bread near Judy and Dave Klingebiel’s home in Salem, New York, about 10 miles across the border from Dorset, Vermont.
Michael London’s bread was becoming famous thanks to write-ups in The New York Times and Bon Appetit. For his next licensing arrangement, he and the Klingebiel’s settled on Chittenden County, as Ed Klingebiel lived in Williston.
Dave Klingebiel said they wanted to put their bakery and café somewhere with good parking and access to main roads. They found the vacant Farrell Street space just off U.S. 7, near Interstate 89 and I-189.
“It was just like a big gymnasium,” according to Dave, who said the Klingebiels took out their measuring tapes and got to work outfitting the place that would become the bakery and café. The key component was the 21-ton oven made of stone, brick and steel installed by a specialist from France.
They called the business Klinger’s, based on a nickname bestowed by coaches upon the brothers from their days in competitive sports – along the lines of “Klinger, don’t drop the ball on the 1-yard line anymore,” according to Dave Klingebiel.
Klinger’s was a second job for all three owners, who had no professional baking experience. “All of us were able to put in what was needed as we grew,” Dave Klingebiel said. “We were learning everything as we went.”
From Bosnia to South Burlington
One thing they learned within the first few months was that they needed more than just the café to keep them going. They began making bread for wholesale accounts, selling Klinger’s mostly sourdough-based baked goods in grocery stores and food cooperatives.
“About 60% of our breads, maybe a little bit more, are made with the sourdough starter,” according to Dave Klingebiel.
Ed Klingebiel said Klinger’s would drop bread samples off at local businesses to let them know the bakery was up and running along a non-commercial strip at Farrell and Swift streets that drew minimal foot traffic. “It didn’t take long for word to spread,” he said.
Patrons would come to the cozy café, which seats about 18 patrons indoors and a similar number outside, and linger over a coffee and a fresh croissant. After hearing demand for sliced bread to make sandwiches, Klinger’s began offering loaves in sliced form to wholesale customers. That made a lightbulb go on regarding the café.
“We said, ‘Why aren’t we making sandwiches?’” Judy Klingebiel said. Now the café offers sandwiches made fresh each morning that customers can grab on their way to work or enjoy on-site. (Klinger’s also sells breakfast pastries as well as soup and salads for lunch.)
Darko Saric came to Klinger’s in August 1994, one year after the business opened. He had just arrived in Vermont from Bosnia, where he had worked at a bakery. He pursued the same line of work at Klinger’s.
“This was a perfect fit,” Saric said. “I like what I do. I like making bread.”
Saric is still making bread, 29 years later, as the head baker at Klinger’s. “Every day is different,” he said, as Klinger’s rotates among 27 varieties of bread.
Part of a team of 10 full- and part-time bakers (about one-sixth of Klinger’s total workforce), Saric said the bakery makes about 3,000 pounds of bread a day, or 20,000 pounds or so a week. That translates to 10 tons of bread weekly, which means each employee produces an average of a ton a week. Loaves range from two ounces to four pounds, according to Saric, with the average about a pound and a half.
His favorite? He said it’s the jalapeno cheddar bread, because of the challenges those delicate ingredients present to a baker. “You have to properly incorporate that in the bread,” Saric said.
Organic yes, low-carb no
Not everything Klinger’s has tried has lasted as long as the café and bakery itself. Klinger’s aimed for foot traffic in the mid-1990s by opening a kiosk in an old bus stop at the corner of Church and College streets in downtown Burlington.
The kiosk was “reasonably successful” for about a decade, Dave Klingebiel said, until an increase in coffee shops downtown took a chunk out of the clientele. The Church Street Marketplace expected the kiosk to stay open 12 months a year, but the Klingebiels said an outdoor kiosk turned out to be not such an appealing option in mid-winter.
“There was just so many months that it wasn’t viable,” Dave Klingebiel said. (The kiosk café is now Petit Bijou and run by Leunig’s Bistro, which is across Church Street from the kiosk.)
Klinger’s introduced organic bread that has been “marginally successful,” according to Dave, and remains one of the bakery’s offerings. Less successful, and no longer offered, were attempts to produce gluten-free and low-carb breads.
Aside from a couple of expansion projects and a rebuild of the 21-ton oven, Klinger’s modus operandi for 30 years has been to make minimal changes. Some new varieties, including Vermont maple oat walnut, are big hits. Pull-apart pastries became a top-seller. The café long ago expanded its drink menu beyond drip coffee to include cappuccinos and lattes.
Ed Klingebiel noted that the business still uses bread recipes that were successful in 1993 and continue to be popular, so there is little reason to change. He did say Klinger’s may revive a handful of discontinued varieties to the roster to celebrate the 30th anniversary.
If you go
WHAT: Klinger’s Bread Co.
WHEN: 7:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, 8 a.m.-3 p.m. Sunday
WHERE: 10 Farrell St., South Burlington
INFORMATION: (802) 860-6322, www.klingersbread.com
Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com.
This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Klinger's Bread Co. in South Burlington marks its 30th anniversary
