Bakeries

Bleeding Heart Bakery in Oak Park to Close, Belmont Now ‘New Home Base’

The convoluted saga of Bleeding Heart Bakery continues with the news that, not terribly surprisingly, the store in Oak Park that was robbed in December is closing in May. According to a Facebook announcement, “With the opening of Elmhurst we saw many of our regulars switch to that store and with our new home base opening at 1351 West Belmont we need to concentrate our efforts in keeping what we do have alive and kicking and focus on what is most important.” Calling the Belmont location “our new home base” also comes a little closer to making official what’s been implicit all along, that owners Michelle and Vinny Garcia are essentially creating a full rival operation to the West Town Bakery, which was launched last year in partnership with Roots owners Greg Mohr and Scott Weiner as a new, more efficiently managed consolidated bakery operation supplying satellite stores with product.

In fact, we found a little-noticed story from January in which the Garcias apparently planned to brand the Belmont location “Original Bleeding Heart Bakery,” to make the distinction more clear, but that idea seems to have been dropped in the general dispute with Mohr and Weiner which boiled over last month. For now, though, the West Town location continues to try to paper over the disputes, still listing the Garcias as the driving force behind the location. [Facebook via Elmhurst Patch]

Bleeding Heart Bakery in Oak Park to Close, Belmont Now ‘New Home Base’