Bakeries struggling due to rising egg, butter, flour prices
RIVER FALLS, Wis. -- It will soon be a little tougher to find a sweet treat in western Wisconsin.
A beloved River Falls cookie shop is calling it quits. And as WCCO found out, bakeries everywhere are being burned.
Mei-Mei's Cookies and Creamery is one of the sweetest places in Wisconsin. Mei-Mei Abdousch is the owner.
"I offer happiness every time they come in here, ice cream and treats. This [bakery] is so deeply in my heart," Abdousch said.
She birthed the place in 2017, leaving a career in finance to finance a dream in downtown River Falls. It's where she created the Tavern Cookie, made with dark chocolate chips, a local beer, pecans and oatmeal.
She created an affordable, inclusive shop with a lot of heart.
"Work with University of Minnesota Masonic Children's Hospital, so we feature patients, they create a new cookie flavor, we sell it in the shop and we name it after them," Abdousch said.
But her sweet mission has succumbed to a bitter reality that the numbers just don't add up. Mei-Mei's is closing at the end of year.
"Essentially everything has gone up. Eggs have more than tripled in cost, and we use quite a few of those every single week. Butter has more than doubled in cost, flour has gone up," Abdousch said.
And it's not just here. Bill Hanisch, who runs Hanisch Bakery in Red Wing, says it's the worst environment for bakers he has ever seen.
"Trying to find starches is next to impossible. Trying to find certain sugars is, you know, you can't do it, so you have to, you know, improvise and a lot of times cut out some products," Hanisch said.
He says gas for deliveries is high and it's difficult to find printed boxes for his treats.
And sometimes you have to say a bittersweet goodbye. Mei-Mei says what she will miss most is the people who work for her and the customers.
Another tricky part of this story is that bakeries work in small margins, selling items for $2 or $3 -- so it doesn't make sense to triple the price for consumers.
Mei-Mei says she hopes to somehow continue her business through a food truck or catering.
