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Birmingham Bake & Cook Company

Birmingham Bake & Cook plays up local profile.

Susan Green juggled a reporter’s phone call with a customer’s request for a candy thermometer while whipping up four dozen black & white cookies for her store’s First Annual Cookie Swap.

Such multi-tasking is part of a typical day for the owner of The Birmingham Bake & Cook Company, who tries to bake something daily for her customers in addition to running her retail store and hosting cooking classes.

Green, a graduate of Tufts University as well as the fabled CIA cooking school has worked in catering, in restaurants, in food purchasing and marketing and as a wholesale fish cutter. The Birmingham Bake & Cook shop, located in a strip mall in that Alabama city, marks her first foray into retail.

“This seems to be a very natural outgrowth of my career,” she says, noting that she’s a fourth generation small business owner. “It’s been gratifying.”

Her prime merchandising displays are the stainless steel Metro fixtures found in restaurant kitchens. Not a big believer in storage, she opts to place small orders more frequently rather than stocking large orders. “I like my stuff where people see it and can touch it,” she says That comes from being in touch with what her customers want.

“I’m here every single day. I know exactly what I have and I know what I need,” Green says. “I play it close to the vest in terms of my timing, but feel I have good relationships with my vendors, as well as my customers.”

Future goals include linking up with the local talent “that makes Birmingham such a cool city,” especially restaurant chefs who she can recruit to teach cooking classes. A holiday food promotion features specialty foods produced within 100 miles of Birmingham. The store promotes cookbooks penned by local authors and chefs.

And she is building relationships with her community as well, offering a customer loyalty program, a used cookbook exchange and encouraging Birmingham’s home bakers with events like the Cookie Swap, where customers exchanged cookies and family recipes as well as good cheer.

“We had people from age 15 to 80. Mothers brought daughters and daughters brought mothers and everyone bought cookies and recipes home,” Green reports. “It was really nice.”