It is just after 10:30 on a Thursday morning and the coffee group is already in full swing at the Chaska Bakery. While customers flit in and out to buy apple fritters and dinner rolls, a dozen older gentlemen sit at the large round table that is always reserved for them.

They swig hot java from Styrofoam cups and munch on frosted doughnuts as they talk about vintage cars, stints in the military and first jobs. Some of the customers wave at them; the group is as much a fixture of the bakery as the trays of sweet pastries lining its display cases.

As the morning passes, the men take turns freshening up each other’s cups of coffee. They constantly rearrange themselves, making room for those who join them and closing the gaps after those who leave.

In many ways, this is just like any other morning for the coffee group – if not for the news that their days of meeting at the bakery are limited.

After 125 years, the bakery at 500 North Chestnut Street is closing its doors for good on April 11. Owner Dave Blackowiak sold the building housing the Chaska Bakery in late March.

“We’ve gotten down to where the economy took its toll on us,” Dave said, noting that the building’s new owners do not plan to operate it as a bakery.

“We were crushed,” coffee group member Ron Waits said of the news that their beloved bakery was going to close.

History

Chaska’s bakery days date back to 1871 when Gottlieb Eder first wheeled a wagon cart through the streets of the city selling baked goods to housewives. Five years later, he also began peddling his goods in Excelsior, Waconia, Young America, Norwood, Watertown and Carver.

Competition came in 1877 when Albert Dennin opened a bakery on First Street. Eder followed suit in 1884, building on the current site of the Chaska Bakery. Over the next four decades, the bakery changed hands a number of times until it was purchased by John Linne in the early 1920s.

The Linne family would go on to operate the bakery in Chaska for almost 50 years. They quickly became known for a number of their baked goods, including their rye bread and their cinnamon coffee cake – recipes that Mary Elliott and her husband Doug carried on when they took over the bakery in the early 1970s.

“Linne was famous for his rye bread,” said Elliott. “So we continued making it as he did.”

The Elliotts expanded the bakery to offer coffee and some seating. Then, in 1985, they sold the business to Dave’s father John Blackowiak. The Blackowiaks remodeled the bakery again, creating a larger retail space in 1990.

When his father retired, Dave took over the back-breaking family business in 2004. “Now I’m the bad guy,” Dave said of his decision to close the doors.

A dying trade

As sad as Elliott was to hear of the bakery’s closing, she was hardly surprised. “We saw it coming when we sold,” she said.

“People changed where they picked up their bakery products,” she explained. “If they were prone to pick up hamburger some place, they would pick up their buns there as well.

“We heard it all the time,” she continued. “They’d come in the next day and say ‘I should have stopped here to get buns last night.’”

Dave said that they watched their business steadily decline over the years. “We lost a lot of wholesale,” he said. Places they once sold big quantities of bread and buns to, began purchasing their baked goods from large-scale distributors.

“Times have changed,” said Dave. “The competition is tougher.”

Dave credits the new freeway and proposed upgrades to Highway 41 with putting the final nails in the bakery’s coffin.

“Roadwork was the deciding factor,” he said of plans to create right-in, right-out turns only at First, Third and Fifth streets and restrict access to his business. But Highway 41 changes were only part of the problem.

“[Highway] 212 made an impact,” Dave added. “When you have someone on a train like that, they don’t get off. They drove right past us.”

In the last couple of years, declining business forced Dave to reduce his staff of 16 to just three, putting the strain of operating a from-scratch bakery on himself and his remaining employees.

“It’s a lot of physical work,” he said. “If someone says it’s easy, it’s not.”

Dave put the building up for sale last year in the hopes that someone else would run it. “We were trying to keep a bakery in town, but no one came forth,” he said.

“Not many people are going into this,” he added. “The trade is dying, in a way.”

Last of its kind

“We were the last bakery in this area that’s a scratch bakery,” said Dave. “All of them are closed up.”

When Chaska Bakery closes, so does one of downtown’s most well-known gathering places.

“People had their birthday parties here,” said Dave.

“We had three generations come to meet here one day,” said his father John. “They were trying to show their kids what they had growing up.”

Now they’ll have to find somewhere else to gather. The coffee group is already working out places for them to meet once their regular spot is no longer available. Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, they’ll gather at The Lodge at the Chaska Community Center. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, they’ll meet up at Arby’s.

But until that time, they can be found at their usual table at the bakery. “We probably should have some kind of ceremony,” said member Ted Biese, eliciting nods of agreement from the others.

“We’re gonna miss it,” said fellow member Marlyn Puppe.

And they’re not the only ones.

“[The town’s] going to miss it,” Elliott said. “They’re going to say ‘Why didn’t we go more often?’”

As for Dave, he’ll miss the customers that he served every morning.

“The people – the meeting and greeting and pleasing- that’s what I’ll miss.”

-Mollee Francisco, staff writer