GLEN COVE, NY — The dawn of a new product, especially in the baking industry, often stems from necessity. Take Glen Cove, NY-based Steiner’s Coffee Cake of New York. After just seven years, the brand is emerging to the masses while simultaneously crafting a family legacy that’s been generations in the making.
While the baking company began operating in 2016, the story of Steiner’s starts in the ’60s with Malcolm Steiner, father-in-law of Nanci Steiner and grandfather to Jennifer Pool, the bakery’s creator-in-chief and president, respectively. Malcolm baked as a hobby and passed his knowledge and recipes on to Nanci. When Nanci was diagnosed with celiac disease more than 30 years ago, she took it upon herself to create a proprietary gluten-free flour blend.
Nanci’s first attempt fell flat. It wasn’t until she was on the brink of her 70th birthday that she landed on the perfect blend … unintentionally fueling the flames for a baking company.
“One day in 2016, she served my brother and me my grandfather’s German sour cream coffee cake, and I said, ‘Mom. You have something here. This is amazing,’” Pool said. “I quit my job the next day.”
While Pool now oversees the production of Steiner’s baked goods — coffee cakes, ginger snaps and brownies — she knew nothing about baking, much less bakery manufacturing, when she left a marketing career to start the company. However, she did know that her mom’s flour blend and Malcolm’s recipe had the potential to be something big.
“One day in 2016, she served my brother and me my grandfather’s German sour cream coffee cake, and I said, ‘Mom. You have something here. This is amazing.’ I quit my job the next day.” — Jennifer Pool | president | Steiner’s Coffee Cake of New York
“At this point, I didn’t know how to bake a thing; I don’t even make my family dinner,” Pool recalled. “[My mom] said, ‘If we’re going to do this, you’re going to have to learn to bake.’ And I said, ‘Okay.’”
Nanci taught Pool everything she knows about baking, which proved critical as an operator since Pool spent the first four years baking everything herself. Though she may have left the advertising profession, Pool’s penchant for sales and love for consumer behavior was baked in. The learning curve came in operations.
“The flour was the first hurdle,” Pool said. “Could we make the flour over and over again with the same quality outcome: a premium product that nobody knew was gluten-free?”
The answer was yes. Within three months, Pool had found a flour mixer to create her mother’s certified gluten-free, kosher and Non-GMO Project-verified blend. Over six years later, Steiner’s uses the same Denver-based SQF2-certified provider that specializes in custom blends to produce between 5,000 lbs. and 20,000 lbs. of flour at a time. Steiner’s also sells the flour on Amazon, its website and in retail locations.
Quarterlies: This story has been adapted from the August | Q3 2023 issue of Commercial Baking. Read the full story in the digital edition here.
