Prior Lake's Edelweiss bakery gets new ownership

Prior Lake American

After 13 years, the Edelweiss Bakery in downtown Prior Lake has new owners, a Prior Lake couple who promise the same bakery but perhaps with an expanded menu.

Original owner Mark Bowles said on Monday the European-style bakery has been sold to Savage residents Joe and Laurie Lin. The couple also owns Cocoa & Fig, a dessert shop with two locations in the Twin Cities metro.

“They will be bringing in their expertise and tasty treats,” Bowles said in an email. “We are really excited for what additions they will be bringing to the bakery and its friends and family.”

Turning the page

Bowles opened the bakery in April 2005 after having lived in Europe for more than 14 years and seeing the role a bakery takes on in European cities.

“There is a bakery in every city,” Bowles said. “You would never go to a grocery store to pick up breads. You go to your bakery, you support it. I really wanted to get that going here.”

Running a small business for more than a decade was not without its struggles, Bowles said. He now plans to teach tennis lessons.

“The wear and tear of the bakery and the six day-a-week grind was really hard,” he said. “My first few years, I didn’t make a penny.”

A few years ago, Bowles began to think about selling Edelweiss to the right buyers. He approached the Lins, but the couple had just had their first child and didn’t want to take on another business at that time.

“It wasn’t great timing,” Laurie Lin said. “They contacted us in 2018 and said, ‘What do you think now?’ We said, yeah, let’s talk a bit more seriously about this.”

The sale of the bakery was finalized in December, and the Lins began running the bakery on Jan. 2.

Bowles said he plans to frequent Edelweiss as a customer.

“We wanted to bring something people can enjoy for a lifetime,” Bowles said. “Hopefully I can come back as an old man and walk by and still see Eloise out front and still see people packed in there. That’s why we build things, why we do things, why we create things.”

Edelweiss has become a gathering place for residents in Prior Lake and the surrounding area, Prior Lake Mayor Kirt Briggs said.

“If you gather before noon, you gather at Edelweiss,” Briggs said. “It has become the morning gathering place for the whole of the city, and it will continue to be a gathering place.”

The community of Prior Lake has made Edelweiss successful, Bowles said.

“Thank you to every patron, employee and supporter that has walked through the door or had the opportunity to enjoy a cake or a treat at a party,” he said.

“Without you, Edelweiss would not be the downtown destination that we strove to bring to Prior Lake and its surrounding communities.”

He added the Bowles family will miss the relationships made through the bakery.

“We will miss the friendly smiles and the happy children eyeing their treats with or without sprinkles,” Bowles said. “We take with us the countless friendships we have made throughout the years and will enjoy Edelweiss from the other side of the counter.”

The Lin family

Laurie Lin grew up in Prior Lake and graduated from Prior Lake High School. Her first job was running food for the buffet at Mystic Lake Casino Hotel. After she graduated high school she went to Tufts University in Massachusetts, where she met her future husband.

She became a preschool teacher after graduating from college before returning to school at the Culinary Institute of America, working in North Carolina and California’s Napa Valley, where she worked as a pastry chef for Thomas Keller at the Bouchon Bakery.

“His work ethic and the way he ran his kitchen really spoke to me — it’s something I internalized,” Laurie Lin said. “Everyone was on the same page when they worked together as a team toward a common goal.”

Joe Lin graduated from Babson College and worked for large banking institutions and small hedge funds. The couple lived in Florida before settling in Minnesota.

After moving, the goal was to open a culinary business. They began a full-service catering company in Shakopee in 2008 under the Cocoa & Fig name and began attending farmers markets across the metro.

“We always came back thinking, wow, nothing is like Prior Lake,” Joe Lin said. “There’s something we had about the connection with the people. It was always our best producing market from a business perspective and it was always our favorite, too. And it was home.”

Cocoa & Fig continued to be a full-service catering business until 2010, when Joe and Laurie Lin decided to focus on desserts and pastries — specifically, mini-pastries. The business grew from catering four weddings its first year to more than 120 weddings regularly the past few years.

“To have that success certainly speaks highly of what she can and will bring to Prior Lake,” Briggs said. “That’s something that should give us confidence in the transition.”

In 2010 and 2013, Cocoa & Fig retail locations opened in Minneapolis and Edina, respectively.

Briggs said he is pleased that Edelweiss is going to another person with ties to the community.

“It shall remain a cornerstone of our community,” he said.

Edelweiss will remain Edelweiss, Joe Lin added.

“The opportunity to build on what they’ve built as a foundation is what we’re excited about,” he said. “This place means a lot to the community, and we want to make sure it stays that way.”

Laurie Lin said at the moment, the couple is listening to what residents and visitors love about Edelweiss and what they would like to see in the future, such as more gluten-free offerings.

“For those that have come to love this place and have their favorite items — come on in, they’re still here,” Laurie Lin said. “For those that are saying I’d like to try something new, we will have that too.”