KANSAS CITY, MO — The team at Moxie Bread Co. in Louisville, CO, is split fairly evenly between pastry, kitchen and bread, with each area staffed by five or six people. Staggered shifts create a seamless workflow that ensures everyone has access to the equipment they need, when they need it. The overlapping schedules promote teamwork, create opportunities for cross-training and give employees a glimpse into different projects in the works. It also means there’s always someone around to lend a hand when needed.
Bread manager Amanda Choe and her team arrive between 11 p.m. and midnight to start their bake, pulling loaves of California Farmhaus mild sourdough, San Francisco-style sourdough, baguettes, seeded varieties, gluten-free, spelt and challah that were mixed, shaped, weighed and proofed earlier in the day.
“We produce between 200 and 400 loaves a day, depending on the day,” said Laura Fessenden, director of operations. “Opening the Longmont facility opened up opportunities for us to introduce Moxie to a new community. In addition to baking for our stores, we also bake for the Boulder County Farmers Market on Saturdays. And we partner with a few local farmers to get our breads, cookies and pastries into Community Supported Agriculture boxes. The farmers market picks up the boxes on Wednesdays and Thursdays. It’s an awesome way to get product to people interested in supporting local farms.”
By the time Harra Conticelli, pastry manager, clocks in at 3 a.m., the bread bakers are wrapping up, leaving the oven free for the pastries that proofed overnight, including croissants, kouign-amanns, King Eggs, cinnamon rolls, Danish and cruffins, along with cookies, brownies and muffins.
“Our laminated items, specifically, can range from 400 on any given day to more than 1,000 on busy Saturdays,” Harra said. “We put out a lot of volume for such a tight team, but we have creative, enthusiastic folks who really love what they do.”
The kitchen crew arrives around 5 a.m. to assemble grab-and-go meals, salads and sandwiches, and the rest of the pastry team is on-site by 6 a.m. to start the next day’s orders. When everything is finished, items are racked and loaded for delivery to the retail locations.
“It’s critical for the bakers to be here early to make sure everything gets out and to our stores early so the displays can get set up before we open,” Harra said. “We want everything to be ready for our customers.”
Balancing act
Once the bake is finished and products are out the door, the team begins prepping for the following day. For Harra, that means shifting into creative mode.
“It’s my time to work on seasonal menus and recipes I’m trying to troubleshoot,” she said. “When I work on seasonal ideas, I have to balance the creativity with the production. Everything has to translate to large-scale production. A lot of planning goes into it with the different stores, events and retail people we work with.” Baking at scale for Moxie means covering the needs of three storefronts. Over time, each location has carved out its own vibe, connected by fresh-baked bread, assorted sandwiches and grab-and-go meals; good coffee; and the opportunity to shop for locally made products from other independent businesses.
The flagship bakery in Louisville remains as family-friendly as the day it opened. It’s a casual, cafe-like gathering spot where the top sellers are lattes, club sandwiches and kouign-amanns. A large sandbox in the backyard keeps children entertained, giving parents a chance to relax and catch their breath. People bring their laptops to work or have a meeting, and friends meet to catch up.
At the Moxie Feed + Seed in North Boulder, customers are all about the bread, with top-selling loaves rotating often. The Moxie Mercantile in Lyons, CO, is more of a tourist-driven destination and has a laid-back, cafe feel.
“It’s right at the gateway to Estes Park, so in the summer, it’s bustling,” Pippa said. “The area has a music-centric demographic — it hosts two music festivals in the summer — and we’ve become a sort of hub for people to hang out. We have house instruments and people just come and jam on Sundays. We sell a lot of hot drinks and paninis at the Lyons location.”
Sustainably minded
Moxie’s commitment to supporting local farms and businesses and working sustainably motivated the team to apply for B Corp Certification, a rigorous process that requires an enormous amount of time and internal resources. Achieving the designation verifies a company’s ongoing dedication to high standards of performance, transparency and accountability.
“We started the process in January and found out at the end of October that we earned certification,” Laura said. “It was a really nice recognition for us.”
Moxie joins a prestigious and growing list of bakeries and baking-adjacent businesses that have achieved B Corp status. On a personal level, the recognition serves as validation of Moxie’s simple founding philosophy: build communities, support others, cherish the environment.
“We are plugged into our communities,” Pippa said. “That’s a happy, satisfying thing for us.”
This story has been adapted from the December | Q4 2025 Craft to Crumb mini-mag. Read the full story in the digital issue here.
