Powza! - Bakery with superhero theme is winning customers
<p>Roberta Bennett, owner of Powza! Bakery, on Wednesday, March 21 in Whitefish. The bakery is located on Baker Avenue just north of the light at Edgewood,</p>
Roberta Bennett may not be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, and she doesn’t own a Batmobile. But ever since she opened Powza! Baking Co. in Whitefish last July, she could be dubbed a real-life neighborhood superhero.
Bennett and her husband, Richard, retired to Whitefish a couple of years ago and quickly got bored with retirement.
“We decided we were going to challenge ourselves,” she said. “From a practical standpoint, we wanted a viable business venture. From a persistent need to flex our creative muscles, we flirted with a deep love for baking. I had always wanted to own a bookstore or a bakery.”
She opted for a bakery and has been drawing on a lifetime of baking and cooking to create all kinds of specialty pastries and breads at Powza.
A comic-book lover since her youth, Bennett also knew she wanted to use a superhero theme as she decorated her shop, located over the viaduct in Whitefish at the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and East Edgewood Drive.
“I wanted us to be everyday heroes,” she said whimsically.
When she found out comic-book words such as “Pow!” and “Zap!” are trademarked, she combined the two words and dropped the “p” in zap to create Powza!
“I love the artwork of older superhero comics,” she said, showing a variety of colorful framed comic-book artwork on the walls.
Another artistic element of the shop is bright paintings of cupcakes by local graphic artist Kristina Callahan.
Powza’s menu has been a work in progress. Bennett started with core bakery items such as pies, cinnamon rolls, cupcakes and doughnuts, and has added many specialties along the way. On Fridays, for example, she makes challah bread. Bennett, a former junior high school teacher, routinely baked bread with her two sons as they were growing up, and challah was one of the breads they enjoyed making together.
Over the Christmas holiday, she experimented with stollen, another ethnic specialty bread, and apparently was spot on. The woman she asked to try the stollen liked it so much she bought the entire batch.
About three months ago, Bennett added meat pies and three daily soups to the lineup, including organic minestrone, turkey sausage-barley and chili with bison meat.
“The Canadians really like sausage rolls, so we added those, too,” she said. “We’ll certainly try to make whatever our customers want.”
This summer Bennett plans to add a cold cherry soup to the menu.
Powza uses local and organic ingredients as much as possible, she added, and makes almost everything from scratch. The doughnuts are the only items made from a mix, but Bennett said it’s the best mix she could find that doesn’t include additives. She customizes the standard doughnut mix by adding her own flavors.
Like so many people who visit Whitefish, the Bennetts fell in love with the resort town on a trip through the area in the early 1970s and knew they’d be back one day. Bennett’s husband was a developer and builder in San Francisco and Seattle for decades and surprised her four years ago with an anniversary trip to the Bar W Ranch near Whitefish. They bought a vintage home on Lupfer Avenue, and then began the transition to their new community.
Bennett would like to see more exposure for businesses on the north side of the Whitefish railroad tracks and has been meeting with other merchants who also would like to see a Whitefish Lake District created. Spring activities are in the works to draw people over the viaduct, such as a children’s art activity and a progressive dinner at northside eateries that would benefit a local charity.
Bennett said she feels fortunate to have found a local staff of bakers and employees who help her keep the shop running smoothly.
Unprompted, baker Jeremy Potter chimes in: “We make smiles here.”
Powza! Baking Co. is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days a week; the soup’s on starting at around 10:30 a.m. Pastry aficionados can follow Powza on Facebook and Twitter.
Call Powza at 730-1055 or email orders@powzabaking.com.
Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.