Finding delicious substitutions for breads, cakes, and cookies when you have food allergies and dietary restrictions can be a challenge. To meet this need, Peachy Yutangco founded Organic Oven in 2001. Until recently, Peachy and her daughter, Precious, only distributed their wheat-free, gluten-free, vegan, dairy-free, eggless, flourless, and sugarless baked goods wholesale across the GTA. Seeing an opportunity to create a space where people with food allergies could enjoy a fantastic fair-trade cup of coffee with anything else sold in the shop, the duo opened a cafe just north of Lawrence on Yonge in June, 2009. “When we decided to open this place we did it cafe style because we’re selling the whole experience; there aren’t many places where people with celiac and allergies can do that,” said Precious. In the store on a beautiful Friday afternoon, they had already sold out of muffins twice; since they opened, the place has been busy non-stop.
Peachy was confident that the expansion of their already successful wholesale business would be a step in the right direction for their company. “The way we make our products is like homemade,” she said, busy in her kitchen in Brampton. “There are a lot of products that we can’t sell through the health food stores because they only buy a certain product – some stores buy, say, just the bread, or the cookies, or the buns – so we’re really limited through the health food stores. I know I can make muffins, pies, cakes,” she said, and this cafe provided a perfect outlet for expanding their product line into less common gluten-free items. Rather than cutting into their wholesale business, the cafe has increased demand for their products in other stores. “Even the Brampton store became busier when we opened the cafe,” said Peachy.