Great Harvest Bakery Gets Full Support from Maplewood Planning and Zoning

Steve Jawor, owner of the Great Harvest Bakery in Olivette, was in Maplewood Monday night, when the Planning and Zoning Commission gave its approval for Jawor to move his bakery to Maplewood.

Jawor’s lease is up, in Olivette, and between Maplewood, University City and the Central West End, he chose Maplewood for a new location.

He doesn’t have a signed lease yet, but hopes to move into 7415 Manchester Road, on the corner of Margarette Avenue.

Jawor told the commission Great Harvest Bakery was started about 40 years ago by two nutritionists in Montana, who developed the recipes, and started teaching other families how to make the bread, primarily whole-grain, the same way.

“Great Harvest is a very unique company, in that they want us all to be community neighborhood bakeries,” Jawor said.

“They give us a lot of freedom to bake what the community demands, to create new products, and they really don’t dictate anything like a lot of franchises do,” he said. “The only thing that they do require is that we buy the wheat through them, and they buy it from Montana wheat farmers they’ve been working with for the last 40 years.”

He said Great Harvest tests the wheat with the bakers’ recipes to ensure quality. Jawor said he mills his own flour onsite with a stone mill.

Jawor said some Great Harvest Bakeries just bake bread, and some have sandwiches and soup at lunchtime, which is what he plans to do in Maplewood.

He also said his bakery has partnered with a local coffee roaster, La Cosecha Roasting, to roast coffee onsite and operate a coffee bar.

Jawor said after his busy season, which is Thanksgiving through Christmas, he hopes to open his doors in Maplewood on January 1, 2013. The bakery will be on the October 9 city council agenda.

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