NORTHAMPTON — For 22 years, Hungry Ghost Bread owners Jonathan Stevens and Cheryl Maffei fed the masses of Northampton with freshly baked breads, pastries and pies.
Neither Stevens or Maffei imagined the bakery would grow into an institution with a loyal customer base and supportive workforce. It’s a beautiful privilege, the couple said. But all good things must come to an end.
The 15 members of the Hungry Ghost Bread team will bake at the 62 State St. location for the last time on Saturday, Dec. 20. Two new bakers, Sam Coates-Finke and Ana Maria Valle Bendezú are buying the business. The bakery will reopen in March after undergoing renovations.
“We’ve been at it 22 years and we’re ready to not do that anymore,” Stevens said. “We’re tired, honestly. We’re in our 60s. We’re done. We’re cooked.”
Retirement is calling
The Hungry Ghost Bread owners decided it was time to retire earlier this year. Maffei, 65, wanted to close up shop before Stevens, but eventually the 63-year-old came to the same consensus.
“I’ve been casting spells,” Maffei joked.
The chance to sell the business fell into their lap a few months ago when Coates-Finke connected with Stevens through the network of Hungry Ghost Bread bakers. Stevens had previously met Coates-Finke when he was a Northampton High School student beginning his baking career.
As co-owner of Backyard Bread in western Massachusetts, Coates-Finke currently builds wood-fire ovens and teaches bread-making classes. He also gives workshops on Jewish baking. Valle Bendezú is a master baker herself, baking at high-end establishments in Lima, Barcelona and Copenhagen.
“This is an opportunity to bake quality bread and pastry for our community, to own our business and to take over from a couple whom we greatly respect,” Coates-Finke said in an email.
The sale of Hungry Ghost Bread includes everything inside the building. Smith College will continue to lease the building as a bakery. Coates-Finke said his bakery will have a new name, but continue to bake breads with local grain and mills.
Change in the community
While the process behind the scenes has been organic, customers in front of the counter are mourning the Hungry Ghost’s pending closure. Stevens said he’s already received emails, social media messages and questions from distraught customers over his decision. These reactions stem from bakery’s status as a staple institution in Northampton, which resident Dakkan Abbe said continue to disappear.
“This Valley has a really hard time holding onto any kind of continuity of self. We lost Pearl Street, Iron Horse, Coco’s and others,” he said. “It made me sad that it’s another example.”
Abbe asked if Stevens and Maffei had considered turning Hungry Ghost into a worker’s co-op. Many of the employees who worked at the bakery for years — some almost a decade — will be out of a job later this month.
For those who will miss the bread the most, Stevens encourages customers to buy “The Hungry Ghost Bread Book.” He published the cookbook two years ago because he knew he could not keep the business alive forever.
Even on the first snowfall of the winter season on Tuesday, a steady stream of bundled-up customers came into the warm bakery for breads and pastries.
Steven Butter has been buying bread at Hungry Ghost since it opened. He appreciates the rich flavors and cozy, home-baked feel of the goods. Matt Gaspar said everyone deserves to retire, but he will miss the buttermilk biscuits. Abbe adds that Hungry Ghost was particularly incredible during the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing people to pick up bread and pay later.
“This is a really special place,” Northampton resident Myla Kabat-Zimm said. “Whoever replaces it will be great, but this [bakery] is unique, and the whole community will miss them.”
Baking up a business
Customers have shared that this loyalty is testament to the community space created by the Hungry Ghost team. The community pollinator garden outside the bakery with a sculpture created by Mark Fenwick remains a popular space for families to take their children. Stevens recalls raising $12,000 in “bread futures,” his own form of crowd funding, to help open the business. Community members filed in to help paint a mural on the building’s extension 13 years ago.
“It’s been a privilege to become integrated into a community,” Stevens said. “It’s been an awesome thing to be a village baker and to know my customers and what’s going on with their elderly parents and who went off to college.”
The building itself, Stevens said, carries its own unique spark. It started as an old New England telephone company building where residents would pay their phone bills before housing Northampton Chamber of Commerce, a law office and other businesses.
When President Richard Nixon’s daughter, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, lived in Northampton with David Eisenhower, grandson of President Dwight Eisenhower, the U.S. Secret Service would wait in the State Street building. Stevens and Maffei discovered a defunct direct phone line to the White House while renovating the building in the early 2000s.
Since 2004, however, the building has been filled with the aroma of bread, warmth from the warm oven and chatter of community members. The latter is what Maffei and Stevens will miss most.
“I’m going to miss some of the people I work with and some of the customers. It’s the relationships I’m going to miss,” Maffei said. “I will not miss the constant scrolling of the endless details of running a bakery. The details, the scheduling, the ordering, the bills — it’s endless.”
With retirement in sight, Stevens plans to get back to writing songs on his guitar, long-distance biking and relearning to be a home baker. Maffei will return to her studio filled with artwork. The couple will also spend more time with their two grandchildren.
“It’s been a privilege to become integrated into a community,” Stevens said. “It’s been an awesome thing to be a village baker and to know my customers and their elderly parents and who went off to college. That’s all thanks to the bread. The bread is just a median that allows this to happen.”