‘May As Well Follow Your Dreams’: Fredericton Nut-Free Dessertery Will Become Full-Service Restaurant
FREDERICTON–When Jenna White was young, she went back and forth between the idea of owning a bakery or owning a restaurant when she grew up. She never could decide between the two.
Fast forward into the future and her nut-free desserts got her a spot at the Boyce Farmers Market. That led to her opening a sit-down location that serves meals. Now, she’s starting the process of officially rebranding her business into a restaurant.
“Sometimes when you’re little you really do know what you want to do. Lose that path along the way, but if you’re lucky enough to find your way back to it, it’s kind of fun to see where it goes,” White told Huddle in an interview.
While White has loved to feed people since she was little, the idea for her nut-free bakery started after she developed an anaphylaxis nut allergy five years ago. A couple of months later, she lost her vision, which left her legally blind. Both these diagnoses were a result of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a disease that affects the connective tissues in the body.
White said the disease causes “a host of secondary diseases,” meaning although the sudden allergy and vision loss are related to Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, both are completely separate and did not have an effect on each other.
After developing the nut allergy, White realized how difficult it is to find something safe to eat. White said her idea to open a nut-free dessertery came from there being a need for one in Fredericton, since no one had done it yet.
She started selling her nut-free baked goods at the Boyce Farmers Market on June 1, 2019. That led her into a sit-down location in June of 2021. She didn’t intend for that Urquhart Crescent location to be a bakery when she first opened it; it was only for the production of her baking mixes and the flour mill she started creating when the pandemic hit. But since the location had to have a commercial kitchen anyway, she developed into selling both her nut-free baked goods and a variety of food dishes as well.
“If we’re going to have that commercial kitchen, we may as well utilize it to the best of our ability. And then the restaurant side was born out of it,” said White. “I liked the fact that we were able to not only expand what we offered, but I was able to put a little bit of that touch of Indigenous cuisine in there.”
Having a permanent location where she could cook food also allowed her to create her traditional Indigenous meal series, which brings traditional Indigenous food to the Fredericton area. She also sells bannock mix that people can purchase and bring home.
“It’s got those fun, unique offerings that we get to share culture, which is pretty special to me,” White said.
Her restaurant also serves a full breakfast and lunch menu, as well as coffee.
White said she’s in the process of expanding the dishes she offers in her restaurant. She has a flour mill from Austria and a pasta machine from Italy both on the way. The flour mill will create fresh, stone-ground flour which she plans to use to create her own brand of pasta to sell.
She said with the expansion, everything will continue to remain nut-free.
June 1 marked two milestones for White’s nut-free business. It has been three years since she opened her small folding tables at the Boyce Farmers Market and one year of being in her sit-down restaurant location.
White said the restaurant industry is risky, but when she developed her nut allergy and realized how difficult it can be, she knew there was a small niche market out there in the same position as her.
“It was a realization that there’s risk no matter what you do in life. You don’t even have to do anything and there’s still risk to may as well follow your dreams,” she said.
Jessica Saulnier is a summer intern for Huddle. Send her your story tips: [email protected].