Around 10 a.m. Dec. 23, Jason Voegeli, co-owner of Baked! of Bloomington, arrived at the shop to begin another shift.
Instead, he was met with the sight of water pouring from the shop’s ceiling while a fire alarm blared. Outside, employees and passersby huddled together on the sidewalk.
The bakery, which sells custom cookies, cookie cakes and edible cookie dough, closed Dec. 23 due to flooding caused by a water pipe rupture. Voegeli said plumbing crews operating at the business upstairs accidentally struck a pipe connected to the building’s fire suppression system, triggering a downpour of water into the bakery.
“I immediately grabbed a squeegee and tried to start managing the water, and then after a couple minutes of doing that, I realized that was going to be more water than I could handle,” Voegeli said. “Within an hour, maybe two hours, they had a crew coming to help us out.”
Voegeli said SERVPRO, a nationwide clean-up and restoration service, responded quickly to help the business begin its recovery process. One crew removed equipment from the store to test for malfunctions, while another completed demolition. A different crew reinstalled drywall, leaving the bakery about 85-90% restored.
“We actually didn't lose as much as I thought we were going to,” Voegeli said. “We're troubleshooting things on our end now. And we're finding a little bit of this and that, but we're not finding a whole lot of extra things that didn't already get caught.”
He said he expects most of the damage and renovation costs will be covered by insurance, even though some losses may not qualify for reimbursement.
This is not the first closure for the business. In July 2017, Baked! closed during its relocation from 313 E. Third St. to its current location at 115 N. Washington St.
Baked! was founded in 2006 at Tenth and College by Jared Schneider the summer before his junior year at IU’s Kelley School of Business. The business was inspired by Schneider’s goal of delivering customizable, fresh-out-of-the-oven cookies to customers, he said in an interview with The Herald-Times on Jun. 30, 2006.
Voegeli said he started out as one of those customers. He visited the story during a grand opening at its Third Street location.
“I put an application, and the rest is history,” he said.
Voegeli said he began working at Baked! as a substitute delivery driver in 2008. In 2011, he and co-owner Jeremy Ness bought the business from Schneider, who decided to pursue further education in Chicago.
For Voegeli, the restaurant business is nothing new. He said he grew up in the kitchen, working in restaurants since he was 14 years old.
Voegeli has worked at Baked! for about 18 years. He said he loves all the people he’s been able to meet in his nearly 18 years at Baked!.
“We get a lot from our customers and employees,” Voegeli said. “It seems like people really want this to be here, and when something happens, like, you know, they reach right out, and they're like, ‘Hey, if you guys need anything, let us know.’”
Anna Coney, manager of Baked!, had a similar start to her career at the bakery.
Coney said she began working at Baked! as a delivery driver after the business she previously worked at closed. Originally, her position at Baked! was a temporary job replacement, but she said she ended up falling in love with the bakery.
“One thing that's very important to me is, like, trying not to create a lot of waste,” Coney said. “I feel like Baked! virtually creates no waste, like, anything that we have left over, we give to a church that gives to homeless people.”
At first, Coney said she was concerned about the potential financial burden she would face when Baked! closed after the pipe rupture. However, she said her stress was alleviated after learning that paychecks would be covered by insurance.
Looking forward, restoring sales is a priority, Coney said.
To boost sales, she said Baked! began selling beverages around two weeks before the pipe burst after noticing customer demands for coffee.
“It was at least once or twice a day whenever I was working where someone would come in and ask us if we had coffee, and we always would have to say, like, ‘No, I'm sorry, we don't,’ and kind of recommend another place,” Coney said.
Voegeli said Baked! was working with Brown County Coffee & Tea to equip the shop for selling coffee.
“The big process is where everybody had to step up was getting trained and learning how to make drinks on an espresso machine — a lot of people had never done that before,” Voegeli said. “We had just started doing it, and then that happened. So probably we have to do a little more training again when everybody comes back.”
After Baked! reopens, Coney said she hopes to see the drink menu expand. She said some ideas she has for the business are seasonal cookie doughs and more options for cookie mix-ins.
Voegeli said he hopes to upgrade the shop’s environment, such as by bringing more board games for customers. He also said he would like Baked! to be a place where customers can study.
While Baked! does not have a set reopening date, Voegeli said he hopes to open as soon as possible — ideally in the next two or three weeks.
For the grand opening, Voegeli said the business plans to have special deals and cookie and drink combinations, though he does not know what they will be yet.
Coney has been creating signs for the shop’s drink menu, which she said will likely be completed before the first week of March.
She said she gets motivated whenever she walks into the shop and sees its restoration progress.
“Being able to go into the shop and see where we're at and also having like the owners be there and just be like hyping us up that like it's going to be better, like all of the equipment is better, like the shop is renovated — it looks nicer,” Coney said. “That is getting, at least me personally, like very excited.”
