Other Media:

• Watch customers and staff interact on a busy Sunday morning at Reinhart's patisserie
• See a slideshow of the shop and goodies

External Links:

• Question and Answer with Reinhart
• Visit the Sweet Life Patisserie's web site and order a famous cake
• Visit the Eugene Weekly web site "Best of the Best" review of Sweet Life Patisserie

Other Stories:

• Tom Bollag brings his style of five-star cuisine to Eugene through his Chef’s Kitchen.
• Linda Burden-Williams, an actress who lives in Veneta, teaches her students that acting is self-exploration.
• John Canzano gives the scoop about journalism, sports and life outside his Oregonian column.
• JR Gaddis, like his father and grandfather before him, knows a lot about printing.
• Giancarlo Guerrero is helping make magic every time he picks up the baton to lead the Eugene Symphony.
• Toby Hill-Meyer, a University of Oregon student, is an activist in the area of gender identity.
• Rick Hogue finds that salesmanship and guidance are the elements of success in financial consulting.
• Carl Hosticka juggles a university teaching position with a political career spanning 20 years.
• Bill Hunter's long journey has led him to satisfaction, working for the parks department in Eugene.
• Mona Lindstromberg has a lot to say about the land watch groups she’s involved in and development issues.
• Thaddeus Moore owns and operates Sprout City Studios, a recording studio in West Eugene.
• Lesley Neufeld, who has designed costumes for movies and television, now owns a boutique in Cottage Grove.
• Robert Parrish wouldn't give up after an educational setback, and in four months he will be a paramedic.
• Rick Pettigrew's Archaeology Channel is a well-visited Web site devoted to bringing archaeology to the masses.
• Catherine Reinhart has watched Sweet Life Patisserie grow from a small garage shop into a well-known bakery.
• Neal Zoumboukos, longtime offensive line coach, has been molding bodies and minds in Eugene for a quarter century.

Living the sweet life

The co-owner of Sweet Life Patisserie opened the flourishing shop without any business background or formal training.

By Ashley Griffin

At 755 Monroe St. in Eugene, Ore., lies a little “scratch” bakery that was made from scratch itself.

Catherine Reinhart didn’t know anything about owning a business when she opened the bakery, Sweet Life Patisserie, with her sister, Cheryl Reinhart. Her only experience in the cooking industry stemmed from a three-year stint working in bakeries, and even her college degree couldn’t help her with how-to’s – she majored in French.

	Reinhart stands in the newest addition to Sweet Life Patisserie while a baker frosts a cake behind her. This new bakery is located across the street from the main store and has all the modern conveniences her bakers need.

The one thing she did know was she was born to bake.

“I’d done it all my life. We were raised by my mom and she worked and we had to learn how to cook for ourselves,” she said, adding that of the two sisters, she specialized in the baking.

After attending Boston University and enjoying four months abroad in Grenoble, France, amid the foreign city's many boulangeries and patisseries, she graduated and decided to move to Eugene with her sister. The choice was an easy one as they’d lived in many other parts of the country, but never the West Coast. They wanted to experience the West Coast way of life.

After working in a couple of Eugene’s bakeries, the sisters decided to try owning one. In 1993, they turned their home garage into a certified kitchen and operated their business from there. The first day they made $75 and were thrilled to pull in the profit.

“No one had ever heard of us and we were like, ‘What can we do, we have a kitchen now,” she said.

Within their kitchen the sisters quickly decided how they wanted to manage their business and what kinds of products they wanted to sell. These kinds of responsibilities were the reason they opened their shop in the first place.

They founded Sweet Life Patisserie on the belief that it should be different from traditional American bakeries that rely on shortening and box mixes to turn out their products.

“I had my own ideas about what a bakery would be,” Reinhart said.

During her time in Europe, Reinhart discovered that making food from scratch truly enhanced its quality and the overall dining experience.

“People can actually taste the difference,” she said, explaining that many American bakeries are catching on to this philosophy and starting to make items from scratch.

Sweet Life also created a large selection of desserts for local vegans with items so delicious that non-vegans order them just as often. Reinhart said most bakeries only have a few vegan items but at Sweet Life, a fourth of their business is in the vegan department.

A University of Oregon senior, Lauren Frost, highly recommends the vegan cheesecake, saying it's one of the best cheesecakes she's ever had - vegan or non-vegan.

The challenge was not only to create these vegan items, but to plan a menu and focus for their bakery, which soon became cakes.

“We stuck our fingers in a lot of different pies and found stuff that caught on,” Reinhart said. “When we started we knew we didn’t want to do breads. When we were in our house we couldn’t really do muffins and morning pastries, so that was why the cakes.”

Their tiered, flowered and iced wedding cakes were, and still are, a big hit and were the easiest things to make in the small space of their garage.

However, both sisters knew they wanted something more, and for them something more meant something bigger. Five years later they opened a larger retail shop at the same location and expanded their menu to include espresso drinks, tarts and many other new items.

“That was really fun because we’d be in our garage making cakes and what we really wanted to make was a tartlet,” she said.

The foods they bake - from their Cloud Nine Cake to their Triple Chocolate Obsession - are fresh and delicious. And, as Reinhart puts it, they are a healthy choice in comparison to other dessert options.

The pastry case at Sweet Life is large and enticing. Bakers prepare the items each morning.

“Sweet Life is good for you – people can’t finish stuff because it is so dense and rich. One bite is enough,” she said, although many of her customers beg to differ.

The demands of Reinhart’s job have changed over the years. She and her sister used to do it all: the baking, the cleaning, the advertising and the business jobs were all on their shoulders. Now she and her sister focus on the business and marketing for Sweet Life and let the bakers, decorators and counter staff take care of the other duties. Still with the popularity of the shop and constant flow of customers, Reinhart’s life is anything but empty.

“[Most days] I come in and say, ‘I don’t have anything to do today,’ and then it hits me,” she said, referring to the constant phone call orders and inquiries she receives each day.

“Pretty much what I do now is answer the phone,” she said as she grabbed the ringing receiver.

During a brief conversation with a customer, she ran into the freezer twice to see what kinds of cheesecake she had available; customer service is at the heart of her business philosophy.

Another philosophy the sisters embrace is to keep growing. After the first move, the sisters never thought they’d have to remodel again, but they underestimated their popularity. They have just completed a new expansion and are taking in from $2,000 to $6,000 in their shop on regular business days. It’s a far cry from their opening day – their income, clientele, employees and menus have expanded to make Sweet Life a well-known cure for the local sweet tooth.

Reinhart considers the popularity of Sweet Life and the last remodel her biggest accomplishments as a bakery owner.

“In 10 years it’s a legend. That’s incredible,” she said.

She says she's succeeded in a business without formal training on the basis of a hard work ethic, generosity to her customers and a creative spirit.

“My philosophy is if you need to know something you’ll figure it out. I learn by actual practical experience. We’ve picked up things as we go along,” she said. “The library to me is the best education. People pay lots of money to go to school when the information is out there. People just have to use it.”