Expanding well beyond the traditional coffee and doughnuts, the Westerly-based Bess Eaton Coffee Shop & Bakery company has unveiled ambitious plans for unprecedented growth.
In recent weeks, the company opened a prototype “Bess Eaton Plus Coffee and Bake Shop” on Post Road in North Kingstown. The store – with a New England clapboard exterior — features a high tech triple-deck oven imported from England. The high tech oven – connected via computer to Bess Eaton’s headquarters on Tom Harvey Road in Westerly — produces cinnamon rolls pastries and gourmet breads.
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Next week, a similar store will hold a grand opening at Dunn’s Corners in Westerly.
In the coming weeks, new or remodeled Bess Eaton stores will open in Wakefield, Rhode Island and Waterford and Plainfield, Conn. Bess Eaton officials last week appeared before the Richmond Planning Board to discuss plans for a store on Route 138 in that community.
The company’s three-year plan calls for 24 new stores and the remodeling of 50 percent of its existing stores.
Bess Eaton, founded on Oak Street in Westerly in 1953, now operates 52 stores throughout Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut. The company employs more than 800 people and enjoys annual revenues of more than $30 million. Its president and chief executive officer is Louis A. Gencarelli, Sr.
According to Frank Servidio, director of operational research and development, those employment numbers and revenues are destined to grow. Bess Eaton, he said, has made a concerted effort to expand its product line to include “hot products” baked on premises.
“We’ve kept things simple,” said Servidio. “That has been one of our successes over the years. We talk to our people. The answers are at the stores, on the front lines.”
Servidio said 70 to 75 percent of business at Bess Eaton stores is drive-through and that each store averages 850 customers each morning. Servidio would like to see those customers again, later in the day. His push is to get them to come into the store, perhaps on their way home from work, to pick up a loaf of freshly baked bread. Each store will now post hours at which customers are guaranteed fresh from the oven products.
Patti Cimalore, director of marketing, joined the company just a few months ago. She points to the company’s new logo – which includes the design of a heart – and insists that it signifies so much about Bess Eaton.
“The heart signifies who we are,” she said. “It is the heart and the soul – the essence of the company.”
