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Amalia Oblitas (above) and her husband, Carlos Saucedo, opened Pancito Bread in Ferry Farm Shopping Center nine months ago.
Amalia Oblitas and Carlos Saucedo are looking into opening another Pancito Bread outlet in Northern Virginia. |
Amalia Oblitas and Carlos Saucedo have big plans for the small bakery they opened nine months ago in Ferry Farm Shopping Center.
They'd eventually like to turn Pancito Bread, with its tempting array of freshly baked breads, savory empanadas and luscious desserts, into a franchise.
"This is a very good business. People like it very much," said Oblitas, a former architect who took cooking classes wherever her husband's job as an airport manager took them. "We're looking for investors."
The couple, who met and married in Bolivia, decided to go into business together after the contract for Saucedo's job at the Los Angeles airport was canceled. They and their children moved to Virginia, where he has relatives, and began looking for something to do so they could stay in the United States.
"My daughter and two sons like the United States very much," Oblitas said. "For me, the United States is a big country and there's more opportunity."
Starting a business in the United States would also win it more acceptance than one started in Bolivia or any of the other South American countries that Saucedo's job had taken them
"When McDonald's goes into South America, the response is incredible," said Oblitas. "There are big lines every day to go to McDonald's. In Rio de Janeiro, people get dressed up to go to McDonald's."
Oblitas was born in Barcelona, Spain, to a Spanish father, who instilled in her a love of art and architecture, and a strict German mother, who encouraged her daughter's love of baking.
She can still recall the smell of bread dough rising on a table in her mother's kitchen, and a number of the desserts she now sells at Pancito Bread, such as her popular Black Forest cake, are made from her recipes.
Oblitas' family moved to Bolivia, where her father bought land and started a lumber business specializing in chonta, a dark brown wood used to make furniture and paneling. Oblitas finished high school there but didn't go on to college to study architecture until her two oldest children were in high school.
After graduation, she helped design self-sustaining housing projects where people could live and work. Wells provided water, and there were windmills atop the adobe brick houses to generate electricity.
It became her passion, she said, but her doctor told her she had to stop using a computer so much because it was making her dry-eye syndrome worse. In the meantime, friends who adored the food she'd make for big celebrations kept asking why she didn't open a bakery.
Oblitas finally decided to do that when she spotted a vacant retail space next to The Finishing Touch Flowers in Ferry Farm Shopping Center. She called the landlord to find out about the rent, and was offered the first two months free.
The couple named their business Pancito after the Spanish word for "little breads," and set about painting the place themselves in warm shades of burgundy and gold. They also saved money by buying their equipment online.
Then Oblitas began teaching her husband how to bake, using recipes she'd handwritten or clipped out of magazines and newspapers and pasted into a thick school copybook over the past 30 years.
Saucedo proved a quick study, she said, but hesitated when she presented him with a white chef's hat and jacket with Pancito Bread embroidered on the front. He'd always worn a suit and tie to work, and would refuse to play with their children when he came home until he'd changed, she said. He now wears the chef's jacket but drew the line at the hat.
Business has been brisk at the bakery, which the couple tells customers to treat as if it's their home. A variety of freshly baked breads reflecting her interest in European and South American food fill baskets on the front counter, while cream-filled napoleons, slices of Black Forest cake and sodas are displayed in a refrigerated case.
"People come in and say, 'What are you making now, Amalia?'" said Oblitas, who bakes in small batches every few hours so she can vary the assortment and keep things fresh. "What time will it be ready? OK, I'll come back."
The couple also offer boxed lunches of sandwiches and dessert; catering, where they serve such things as bite-size salteñas, a type of Bolivian empanada; and children's parties, which include a cake and hands-on session on baking bread into fun shapes such as cars and rabbits.
The couple are planning to expand their operation by offering a new product Oblitas has developed called "peckos," filled, sandwich-sized pastries that come with a choice of sauces, and a section called Pie Mania. They're also looking to hire employees and open another, larger Pancito Bread in Northern Virginia.
"The idea," Saucedo said, "is to go across the whole United States."
Cathy Jett: 540/374-5407
Email: cjett@freelancestar.com
