Savage’s Bakery celebrates 80 years in business

Ben Cook is hard at work in the basement kitchen at Savage’s Bakery, applying a thick layer of whipped cream to a thin, flourless chocolate cake that’s been dusted with cocoa powder. He folds the finished product — called roulage — into a tight roll and wraps it in foil.

The dessert will make its way into retail outlets around Birmingham. It’s one of the signature pastries at Savage’s, which celebrates its 80th anniversary this year.

Cook, 57, has worked at Savage’s for nearly 40 years. He came on board as a teenager and now makes the drive to 18th Street South in Homewood every day from Center Point.

“I didn’t know anything about baking when I came here,” Cook said. “I was trained by Van Scott. This place is like a family, working for him.”

Cook and Scott had that in common when they started. When Van Scott and his wife purchased the business from the Savage family in 1978, he had to jump in and learn from the beginning.

“Tommy Duncan was our old baker,” Scott said. “He never learned to drive a car, and he took the bus to work every day. He wore a coat and tie to work. He’d get here and take his coat and tie off, put his work clothes on. He took the last bus at night and the first bus home in the morning, so in order for me to learn how to bake, I had to work at night.”

And right from the start, Scott began to cultivate that feeling of family that Cook mentioned.

“I treat people the way that I would want to be treated,” Scott said. “We really do see everyone here as a part of a family.”

There’s the traditional part of the family, of course. Scott’s daughter, Elizabeth, says the bakery was a fun atmosphere to grow up in, though she never saw him in the mornings because of the early hours bakers keep.

“We might hear him going out the door at 2 in the morning,” she said. “But when you grow up in this kind of environment, the people who work with you really do become your extended family.”

The history of Savage’s Bakery winds through the Scott family’s life. Van Scott’s mother attended the grand opening of the bakery when it was located on Highland Avenue in Birmingham, back in 1939.

In the days when William Savage and his wife owned the bakery, Savage would often stand outside the shop on weekday mornings and hand fresh-baked cookies to students hurrying to school. A sweet treat from Savage’s was always something to savor for generations of children in Birmingham.

“I can remember getting my allowance on Fridays — $10, $15, whatever it was — on Fridays when I was a kid,” said Regis Timmons, who now manages the shipping operations for the bakery. “I’d come in and get a smiley face [cookie], a Coke and a cupcake. You know, I learned a lot of the products here just by being a customer.”

When he first bought the business as a 27-year-old, Scott had to learn quickly. Now he’s the one teaching others the lessons he learned as a young man.

“This business is a touchy-feely business,” Scott said. “You have to know what you’re doing by the feel of the dough, know what it looks like. You have to learn by doing.”

Cook agrees.

“You have to be consistent in everything,” he said. “You have to be consistent in the leavening, the volume, the shape.” At the height of the bakery’s popularity, Scott said he employed around 50 people during the holiday season, with 13-14 salespeople at the front counter alone and nine decorators.

“It was like a beehive in here,” he said.

With competition from grocery-store bakeries and the like, Savage’s doesn’t do quite the volume it used to. But they’ll still add staff at the holidays to handle the rush.

The hours get long for the bakers in the back, and Scott, 67, remains hands-on in the business. He continues to bake and decorate cakes and pastries. The key to Savage’s success has been consistency. The store kept the original, from-scratch recipes.

“You have crazes that come and go,” Scott said. “A few years ago, everyone wanted croissants; then it was bagels; then it was French baguettes. We just stayed solid, doing what we do.”

And with that consistency has come excellence. This is a bakery where every cookie is cut by hand, and all the recipes are unique to the shop.

“I consider this work my own kind of ministry,” Scott said. “Here, we have the opportunity to impact other people’s lives, even if it’s only in a small way.”

Elizabeth Scott said the bakery’s sense of family doesn’t just end with its employees.

“Bakeries like ours are unique in that we get to be part of people’s family traditions year in and year out,” she said. “That makes what we do special — not only to us, but to  our customers.”