Sisters Bakery

Melissa Ward always kept one of those blank checks issued by credit card companies tucked away neatly in a drawer in case of an emergency.

She never used it in her 20 years as the owner of Sisters Bakery. But as a business owner, Ward always felt the need to be prepared.

“There were times when I had to really say to myself, without selling my soul to the devil, ‘I will do anything to keep this going,’” said Ward, a 40-year Sisters resident who is now 68 years old.

Such love, such attention to detail, explains in part why Sisters Bakery flourished under her watch.

With no business experience, Ward pooled together just enough money in 1995 to buy the downtown Sisters business, which originally started in 1981. It was a way to start a new life and to have a place for her three children (now all adults) to go after school. Along the way, she turned it into a Sisters icon, tantalizing residents and passers-by alike.

But every beginning must have an end.

Feeling “like I’ve done what I kind of intended it to do,” Ward has decided to put Sisters Bakery and its downtown Sisters building up for sale.

“Going through all that, I feel pretty bonded with it and identified with it,” Ward said, reflecting on her 20 years as owner of Sisters Bakery. “But there comes a time when you just want to do something else. It’s on a terrific upswing and I just want to capture that for someone so that they can hit the ground running.”

Ward wants to retrain her focus: knitting, reading, writing, and of course, being a grandmother. But first her goal is to find a buyer committed to continuing Sisters Bakery.

Listed at $669,000 — an all-inclusive price that includes its 2,150-square-foot building at 251 E. Cascade Ave., equipment, and Ward’s recipes that have helped Sisters Bakery thrive — Sisters Bakery should be an appealing venture for the right buyer, said Brad Whitcomb, who along with Alex Robertson is part of the John L. Scott team brokering the deal.

Specializing in cakes, pies, artisan breads, and those familiar donuts, the bakery has more than doubled its sales so far this year, Whitcomb said, and the bakery projects to ring up more than $600,000 in sales during 2015.

“It’s been on fire,” Whitcomb said. “They’ve been selling coffee and donuts through the heat wave. It’s just an amazing place.

“This business is one of the few that I can think of that is so easy to step into and continue the success.”

A staff of 17, including longtime manager Jeremy Bates, should help with the transition. After all, that staff has helped Ward focus on the business itself in recent years.

Such in-house experience should help the new owner “hit the ground running,” Ward said.

“My staff is just wonderful,” she continued. “They run the bakery at this point and make everything we sell and the credit for the success really goes to them. … I do the office stuff and decorate cakes and otherwise get in the way.”

Reaching this level of success has not been easy. The Great Recession took a toll, of course. But even then Sisters Bakery held its own with a little help from “donut power,” a slogan Ward and her staff use to explain the simple joy a box of donuts can bring.

Ward is proud of the way Sisters Bakery has interacted with the surrounding community. And she’s proud of the success.

Now it is time to pass it on.

“It’s not just a place to go to work,” Ward said. “It’s more than that. I tell my staff it’s the happiness business. And I think that is really a true thing.”