Photo / Courtesy, On the Horizon Bakery
Hailee Carter
Updated: August 5, 2024
'Bakery on wheels' finds a niche in Ellsworth
Photo / Courtesy, On the Horizon Bakery
Hailee Carter outfitted a cargo trailer as a full commercial kitchen, with a custom-made service window and displays.
After being injured while serving in the U.S. Army, Hailee Carter returned home to Ellsworth, to a desk job and to her love of baking.
“I went back to baking as a therapeutic piece of my weekends and evenings,” she said. “I was bringing all the goodies into my office and people loved them.”
In 2020, when Carter and others in her office were furloughed, she started a little bakery shop out of her home. The operation outgrew the space. Eventually, she bought and outfitted a van and trailer, relaunching last year as a mobile operation called On the Horizon Bakery.
Today, Carter has a steady flow of customers at two locations in Ellsworth, and also handles events, wholesale customers and special orders such as wedding cakes.
“It’s a 24-hour-seven-day-a-week job,” she said. “It’s truly a labor of love.”
Training injury
Carter, who recently turned 30, always loved to bake.
“My grandmother taught me from the time I was old enough to hold a measuring cup,” she said.
As a young adult, she became a licensed cosmetologist and served in the Army, based in Virginia. She left the service after 2 ½ years due to a training-related injury.
Returning home, she took a desk job, bought a house in downtown Ellsworth, started baking again and realized she might have the makings of a business.
In February 2020, she began building a little shop next to her home. With her office job furloughed by the pandemic, she threw herself into the project and launched the business that September, starting with cinnamon rolls.
“That’s what I quickly got known for,” she said.
She later expanded to breads, with ingredients included raspberries, zucchini and other produce from her garden.
Trailer conversion
Outgrowing the space in just half a year but lacking capital to expand, she sold her house and truck and bought a cargo van. She planned to convert it into a camper van and spend a couple of years figuring out next steps.
“My parents joked that I had a midlife crisis at 27,” she said with a laugh.
She hit on the idea of a bakery on wheels. With the van in hand, she bought a tow-behind aluminum cargo trailer and built it out as a full commercial kitchen.
“I had looked at having a company build it for me,” she said. “But nobody had done a mobile bakery. It was always barbecue truck or a taco truck. The best option was to build it myself.”
Installations included floor insulation and a subfloor, oven, griddle, coffee maker, generators, custom display cases, custom service window, fans units, chest freezer, commercial refrigerator, heat pump and propane tank.
Photo / Courtesy, On the Horizon Bakery
After serving in the U.S. Army, Hailee Carter found success with her mobile operation On the Horizon Bakery, back home in Ellsworth.
Carter pumped money from the home sale into the conversion, and she already owned much of the kitchen equipment. When the pandemic eased, she began working at a downtown café and invested her earnings into the concept.
Licensing and permits in hand, she secured spots at a Home Depot in Ellsworth’s commercial area and downtown at Coastal Interior Designs at the base of Main and Water streets. On the Horizon mobile bakery was ready to roll in July 2023.
'Trial by error'
The startup was sporadic. While continuing to work at the café, she started one day a week at Home Depot, adding another day later that summer at the downtown location, eventually adding a couple of days along with events and private orders.
“It was a trial by error situation,” she said.
This year, she’s been operating five hours a day, six days a week since June.
“The first month was fantastic,” she said. “It was a lot more than I had anticipated. I can credit that to the customers who keep coming back and to the growth of the menu to breakfast sandwiches and burritos.”
Up to 100 customers per day buy her desserts, pastries, hot breakfast and coffee.
“Probably over a thousand items get passed out the window each week,” she said. “Plus wholesale orders. The volume of product coming out of the bakery is substantial.”
Additional business includes online orders, events, fairs and several wholesale accounts. One of the largest is a restaurant in Southwest Harbor that buys her blueberry pies.
A typical day?
“I’m normally up between 3 and 4 a.m.,” she said. “I feed the dogs, get dressed, then head out to the camper van.”
She makes sure the equipment is strapped down, then heads into town. Set-up, taking an hour and a half, includes hooking up the generators, dollying out a full-size refrigerator with baked goods, traying prepped pastries and popping them in the oven, making coffee, and prepping breakfast items.
Once everything is baked, she mounts items in displays, then opens the window for business.
Contractors and office workers
“During the week, I open at 7 a.m.,” she said. “But Home Depot opens at 6 a.m. and lots of people, like contractors, are already there. More often than not, people are sticking their heads in the back door asking if I’m open.”
Contractors need speedy delivery.
“I can pump out breakfast sandwiches and burritos in 10 minutes,” she said. “A lot of folks will poke their head in the door early and say, ‘I’m going to grab lumber. Can I get a breakfast sandwich and I’ll be back in 20 minutes?’ By the time they get out of the store, it’s ready for them.”
The downtown spot is closer to workplaces like the hospital, schools, offices and city hall.
“People will grab a box of pastries and bring it back to their offices,” she said. “I see fewer people there, but larger orders.”
Carter credits her parents, an IT professional and a paralegal who also operate a rental property, for instilling confidence.
“They’re very much do-it-yourselfers,” Carter said.
Ingredients for success
Research and networking helped get the business off the ground, along with the Veterans Administration’s Veteran Readiness and Employment program (formerly called Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment). It helps veterans with a service-connected disability to explore employment options and address education or training needs, according to its website.
“I came home on a crutch and have been through multiple rounds of surgery,” Carter said. “I live with a fair amount of physical pain on a daily basis. That’s a big reason I ended up at a desk job when I came home from the service.”
She wanted to shift her mindset to find something that would make her feel successful and happy.
“So I did some online research, found the vocational education program, and got in contact with a representative,” she said.
With the representative’s help, Carter returned to college, finished a business degree and developed the bakery. He pointed her to the Maine Small Business Development Centers, which offers free small business advising for Maine entrepreneurs.
“That’s an incredible program,” she said. “I’ve worked with people there over the course of five years. They helped me break everything down.”
Carter still connects with her SBDC mentor to discuss ideas for advancing the business.
Financing included a couple of small grants, including $1,000 from the local nonprofit Heart of Ellsworth that toward the purchase of an oven. But mostly the enterprise was paid for out of pocket.
“I did not want to take out a loan,” Carter said. “I wanted to fully own my dream.”
On a recent morning, she had just finished up delivering 14 blueberry pies. That night, she would prep cinnamon twists for the next day.
How late would that keep her up?
“I always budget two or three hours and it ends up taking five,” she said. “So your guess is as good as mine.”
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