Inspiring Conversations with Melanie Thornton of Two Sisters Bakery

Today we’d like to introduce you to Melanie Thornton.

Hi Melanie, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
My sister, Abby Lenard, and I bought the bakery in Nov 2020, right in the middle of Covid. The previous owner had been there 33 years. The bakery was started in 1947, in Jackson, and we are the third owners. Shirley Wernimont, the previous owner, stayed on with us for 5 months teaching us recipes and techniques. We had no prior baking experience! We didn’t even know how to ice a cake! We prayed about it and went out on faith.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
We never really felt much of a hardship from Covid. One of our bakers has been at the bakery longer than we have so that made it much easier to keep our recipes in tradition with the bakery. They are super talented so they have also developed new recipes that our customers have been so happy with. Working with buttercream only is not an easy task so I would say learning to decorate and keeping up with trends is our biggest task at times. I tell everyone it’s like taking a tube of toothpaste and trying to make a flower out of it!

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Two Sisters Bakery?
We are a traditional bakery. We offer about 50 different products daily, all made from scratch in our bakery. From petit fours, homemade pies, 7 flavors of chess squares and cake balls, to custom cakes, wedding cakes and custom design cookies. Our bakery is most known for our buttercream icing, our petit fours and our decorated cookies. We have a large selection of decorated cookies that we keep available and we change them according to season. Christmas time we have Santa and all the Christmas theme cookies. The kids and adults, both, love them and they are a tradition with many families in our area. In a world that is constantly changing, I am really proud that we have kept the traditions of a bakery that has been a staple for many years. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”

What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
I am still learning the lesson of self employment versus home life. One of the most difficult parts of self employment is trying to maintain your family life as well. My sisters children are much younger than mine. My sons are all grown. But I try to push her out the door to make sure she doesn’t miss a ballgame. Family is important to us and I never want our kids or our employees kids to look back and say we weren’t present because of the bakery. One of the benefits of small business is that if someone has a family need or someone’s children have an event that they need to be present for then we just cut back on orders so that we can be there for our families! Family comes first with us.