KANSAS CITY, MO — There’s an old proverb, “It’s better to be lucky than good.” But for bakery owners, just like with their recipes, there has to be the right combination of both ingredients. Amie Smith, pastry chef and owner of European-inspired AMIE Bakery in Osterville, MA, on Cape Cod, has it down to a science. Serendipity certainly had its place in the bakery’s 10-year (and counting) run, but so have vision, determination, hard work — and hard lessons.
Owning a charming, cozy bakery on Cape Cod is the stuff rom-coms and summer romance novels are made of. The reality of running a business that has just 10 weeks to turn enough profit to sustain it for the remaining 42 weeks of the year is … a little less romantic.
“Between July 1 and Labor Day, we go full throttle seven days a week,” said Amie, who splits her time between the bakery and her responsibilities as the current board president of the Retail Bakers of America. “During the summer, we do three to five times the business on a daily basis than we do during the rest of the year.”
Creating a well-oiled system
From the time the doors open at 7 a.m. until they close mid-afternoon, there’s a steady stream of customers — locals and tourists — who stop in for coffee and loaves of scratch-made seeded bread, croissants, bagels, scones, breakfast and lunch sandwiches, cookies, cakes, soups, and more.
The morning bake kicks off around 4:30 a.m. with breakfast must-haves, including the top-selling breakfast sandwich, the McAMIE: sausage, egg and cheese on a homemade cheddar biscuit.
A quick check of the seven magnetic whiteboards attached to the front of the double-door refrigerator in the back gives the team a visual roadmap of the week’s production needs. During the peak of the summer season, the bakery supplements its scratch-made croissants and bagels with product from third-party sources.
From day one, Amie’s vision was to sell only pastries and coffee. Yet, during the renovation of the original location, people kept stopping in and asking if the bakery was going to have sandwiches.
“Finally, I said, ‘I guess we’re going to have sandwiches,’” she said. “We needed to offer items that have better margins than pastry because the volume of pastry needed to pay one utility bill is enormous.”
Over time, the team shifted to large-batch production of sandwiches to streamline operations and increase efficiency.
“We used to make sandwiches in smaller quantities, and we were always making them,” Amie said. “In season, we preassemble 300 to 500 at a time so we’re not trying to make everything else and do sandwich production. We figured out a system that works pretty well.”
Par sheets hang on a clipboard along the back wall to track real-time counts for pies, cakes, cookies, sandwiches and other items, with separate sheets for cake and catering orders. After a lot of trial-and-error, the team has dialed in this process, with executive pastry chef Alyssa Hurlstone managing the system while Amie provides backup as needed.
“It takes years to figure out systems that actually work,” Amie said. “We know what the pars are and what’s on hand. This is a well-oiled machine.”
Starting from scratch; building to spec
When AMIE Bakery opened its first location in December 2014, it was in a tiny space on Osterville’s Main Street “down in the village,” an area that meets expectations of idyllic Cape Cod: narrow, tree-lined streets; quaint storefronts; trendy boutiques; and tons of foot traffic.
“We had lines out the door, and we were busy all day,” Amie said. “But there was no front- or back-of-house. You could ring someone up at the register, turn around and make a cappuccino, reach to the right for a pastry, take two steps and make a sandwich.”
The dishwashing sink sat directly behind the register, and the team was constantly making products because there was no storage.
Even as she opened the first location, Amie had her heart set on a space in “uptown” Osterville that she knew would be perfect for her bakery. At the time, a dilapidated garage sat on the site. Years later, when the property came up for sale, Amie knew it was the opportunity of a lifetime and set out to build a bakery to spec.
The new building was six months out from finishing construction when the bakery lost the lease on its downtown storefront. While the situation created a ripple in production — the team worked out of the local library’s service kitchen for a few months — it turned out to be a blessing in disguise in two ways. First, Amie and her team used the time to plan every aspect of the new location’s operation. Second, the lost lease meant she didn’t need to worry about running, managing and purchasing for two locations.
The nearly 4,000-square-foot bakery opened in 2019. It has a true front-of-house, with a bakery case, seating for 10, a grab-and-go refrigerated case for sandwiches, a freezer for AMIE at Home meals, retail space for branded merchandise and local specialty foods, and a full bar. A large window in the seating area gives customers an up-close-and-personal view of cake decoration.
“The ambience here is like at home, something that feels festive and relaxing,” Amie said. “I want people to feel like they’re in my home. That’s the vibe I’m going for.”
This story has been adapted from the September | Q3 2025 Craft to Crumb mini-mag. Read the full story in the digital issue here.
