Whatcom residents have been calling on Nancy Stuart for creative celebration cakes and delicious piles of scraps and frosting—the beloved Lil’ Scrappies—since December 2016, when she started Saltadena Bakery as a cottage food business out of her home kitchen.
“I started with mostly weddings,” Stuart says, adding that the Scrappies were a way to use up the scraps from large wedding cakes. “Instagram was my best friend…I would give people a little heads up [that a Scrappies flash sale was coming], and then I would post the flavors and it was madness.”
Photograph by Kris Gray Photography
But the Scrappies were more than a business opportunity. Stuart was new to Bellingham at the time, and selling sweets out of her home was a gateway to building connections in the community. Wedding cakes were fun and challenging, tapping into Stuart’s visual creativity as well as her baking creativity, but the process was pretty isolating and the projects were sporadic.
“I wanted to open a bakery because I wanted to be way more accessible; I just wanted more people to have my stuff,” Stuart says.
When a storefront became available on West Holly Street downtown, Stuart jumped on it. As the sole owner with no investors, she relied on her own savings, plus some help from family and friends via Kickstarter. She poured everything into the space—sweat equity as well as financial.
Photograph by Kris Gray Photography
Saltadena’s brick and mortar opened in August 2019; Stuart’s marriage ended a few months later, and a few months after that COVID-19 hit.
“You know,” Stuart laughs, “I thought of every way the business could fail. And I tried to go into it with some wisdom of: ‘this is going to be tough and you’re going to have to keep your eye out for all these things going wrong.’ But…one thing I didn’t anticipate being a possibility was a global pandemic.”
But if anyone was set up to move their business online, it was Stuart. In March 2020, she closed the storefront and took a month off, then came back with online sales that sold out immediately (in a throwback to the days of Scrappies flash sales). And while the initial swell of support for small businesses did eventually ebb, Stuart made it through, thanks in large part to her willingness to be flexible and pivot—though she adds, “if I never hear the word pivot again, I’d be fine.”
Photograph by Kris Gray Photography
That flexibility has served Stuart well in more than just handling global crises. It’s also led to a thoughtful management style, great customer service, and (most importantly) an exciting, fresh take on baked goods. On any given day, customers can expect to find the display case full of cakes and Lil’ Scrappies, yes, but also cream puffs, macarons, and cookies, in flavors that range from elevated-expected (salted caramel, vanilla bean) to surprising and compelling (black sesame, salt and pepper). Stuart has also turned her flavor creativity to specialty drinks, like the Salty Fog (a London Fog with cardamom, salted caramel, and salted cold foam) or the Black Sesame Latte.
The joy Stuart takes in what she does is more than just a means to an end—it’s the reason Saltadena exists.
“I try to really strike a balance between what I want to do and what people are demanding of me,” she says, “because the moment that I’m not enjoying it anymore, what’s the point?”
111 W. Holly St., Bellingham, 360.393.3111, saltadena.com
