Edible Food Find: Lavender Bee Baking Co.
Photos by Little Outdoor Giants
Kelsey Munger wears a lavender bandana around her head and purple nail polish, a bee necklace and bee earrings. On her right arm, she sports a tattoo of sprigs of lavender encircling a Bundt pan; on the other arm, a bee against a galaxy background.
“I’m very on-brand,” she laughs as she serves up a vibrant lavender lemonade at Lavender Bee Baking Company, one of three businesses operating in Monumental Market in Jamaica Plain; Munger shares space with El Colombiano Coffee and Light of Day Records.
For Munger, co-owner and head baker of Lavender Bee, it’s an expression of a dream that took root as a teenager. In fact, she recently came across an archived tab on her laptop from 2011 called “LBBC,” featuring a mood board of the bakery, and she still references an oil-covered mini notebook she’s filled since 2014 with recipes and ideas. Munger, who just turned 30, is clearly manifesting.
“I’ve had a one-track mind since I was 13 that I would open a bakery,” she says, breaking down the business name. The bee part: Munger was raised on a farm in Sherborn next to a neighbor who kept bees and by a mother who decorated their house with bee décor. The lavender part: Diagnosed with a severe peanut and tree nut allergy as a child, Munger turned to baking to create her own safe treats. Upon entering the food industry, she learned that the color purple is a common way to denote allergy-friendly or allergy-free equipment. It also happens to be one of her favorite colors.
“Baking is just my everything, and I needed to find a way to give people with allergies the opportunity to eat safe baked goods. I bring a lot of experience learning about alternative ingredients that someone without allergies wouldn’t even think to research,” she says.
Lavender Bee’s transition from dream to reality began when Munger worked at the since-closed Brookline Grown, where she baked out of a toaster oven and the company let her brand her baked goods as Lavender Bee. She moved on to selling at pop-ups in the Brookline space and then officially launched the business in 2017 at several farmers markets while cooking out of a shared kitchen in Stoneham. In February 2020, Munger opened Lavender Bee Baking Company at Monumental Market with Javier Amador-Peña of El Colombiano Coffee and Chris Antonowich of Light of Day Records, both of whom she met on the farmers market circuit.
Munger’s creations may be free of nuts but they’re not lacking in taste, and they appeal to people with allergies and without: from staples like banana chocolate chip bread, salted chocolate chip cookies and apple cake, to a rotating assortment of seasonal pop tarts (apricot was a recent feature), crumb cakes and scones. While Munger’s recipes always leave out nuts, they may also offer substitutions (sunflower-based SunButter for a nut butter, for example) and may be gluten-free and vegan.
“I feel like I’ve really found my niche in doing simple things really well,” says Munger, who holds a master’s degree in gastronomy from Boston University.
Though they were pressed to quickly pivot as a result of the pandemic—selling cookie dough tubs and cold brew concentrate and pre-order pickups—Munger and her colleagues were fortified by the community, which rallied and built the strong local connection that is so central to the business.
As life edged closer to a post-pandemic normal, Munger has been able to plan ahead: She added a full-time baker and a front-of-house manager to give her more time for running the business and recipe development. Meanwhile, she’s added more savory options to the menu, like herbed mascarpone and Dijon buns and grab-and-go breakfast and lunch menus. Long-term, she hopes to open another location.
“We wanted to create a community space where people can get local products but also feel like they can just come in and have a good moment in their day,” she says. “Even in that first year through the pandemic, that came across, and people could see that we are all passionate, small business owners who really care about our products.”
This story appeared in the Fall 2022 issue.
