Downtown bakery gets a makeover and a butcher plans to open an Italian restaurant
There haven’t been too many slow days for Lauren Rogers, owner of the downtown Olympia bakery Gotti Sweets. She bought the business in 2018 and has been steadily creating specialty cakes and other baked goods ever since.
But one day during a pause in business she took a closer look at a Puget Sound Energy email after her bill was automatically paid. She scrolled down the email and there it was: a chance to enter a contest to win $45,000.
As Rogers said, “You can’t win if you don’t play,” so she entered the contest and was announced this week as one of four statewide winners of PSE’s “Small Business Energy Makeover Contest.”
PSE said the investments will help reduce the winners’ energy use by 20 percent.
Although winners were announced this week, the money already has been invested in Rogers’ business. She now has a new display case, a three-door freezer, and a hot water heater as well as $15,000 in cosmetic upgrades.
“I cried again yesterday,” she said about her good fortune, adding that after a difficult, pandemic-affected year, to win was “something so positive that it keeps you going.”
Rogers grew up in the Portland area and made a career change when she was in college. And what a career change: It began when she was working a part-time job at Baskin-Robbins and she discovered a knack for making ice cream cakes.
She has always enjoyed baking, and was encouraged to do so by her grandmother, she said. Rogers later attended a culinary institute in Portland, then landed a job at a Portland area bakery. Guess who also worked there? The former owner of Gotti Sweets.
With financial help from her grandmother, Rogers bought the business. She makes specialty cakes for birthdays, weddings, memorials and other events and celebrations, as well as cupcakes, macarons and cookies.
Gotti Sweets is at 422 Legion Way SE. It’s open 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays.
Butcher to become restaurateur
Eighteen months ago, Brian McDonald, seeing a need for a butcher in the downtown Olympia area, opened Delmonico’s Heritage Butcher shop at 916 Fourth Ave. E. The whole-animal artisan butcher shop has since grown to six employees.
The business buys mostly from area farms and the meat is delivered fresh, not frozen, then broken down by hand into a variety of cuts of beef, lamb, pork and chicken, McDonald said. The business also makes its own sausage, smoked meats and other items.
Up next is McDonald’s second act: opening a small Italian restaurant later this month in the same space that would operate after the butcher shop has closed.
He envisions a reservations-only space for 14 diners that would open at 8 p.m. and seat the last guests at 10 p.m. The meal is planned as a “journey through Italy,” making stops in Catania, Rome, Naples and Milan. In all, there would nine savory dishes and three sweet offerings, he said.
One of the main dishes will be a Tuscan-style ribeye for two, made with grass-fed beef rib steak cooked over open fire, rubbed with rosemary, bay leaf and coarse black pepper, and finished with organic extra-virgin olive oil.
Delmonico’s is open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily. Learn more about the business on Facebook or at https://www.delmonicomeats.com/.
If you know of a retailer, restaurant, coffee shop or other business that is opening, closing, expanding, remodeling, or changing its focus, send an email to reporter Rolf Boone at rboone@theolympian.com.
