In retrospect, Alexis Collins knows she was naive to set up a bakery on a Soulard sidewalk based on the honor system. But she wanted an outlet for her baking, and she’s enough of an optimist that she decided to go for it. “I thought, We’ll try it one weekend, and if it works, great,” she says. “If it doesn’t, OK.”
So in August she set up what she called a “micro-bakery stand” in front of her home in Soulard. She called it Simone’s Flour Garden after her middle name, and placed on its shelves different baked goods every weekend (Japanese milk bread, focaccia, brown-butter chocolate chip cookies), along with both a cash box and options for Venmo, Cash App, or Apple Pay.
Perhaps surprisingly, it worked. That first weekend was great, and so was the next one. “People were leaving the amount,” Collins reports. “And the community was so great, people were even leaving tips!”…