In ten short years, Haley House Bakery Café in Dudley Square has become an institution and a cultural gem. It opened its doors in 2005 as an expanded site for Haley House’s Bakery Training Program, which had outgrown its home in the organization’s South End soup kitchen.
Author: Lolita Parker, Jr.Bing Broderick, Executive Director of Haley House.
Bing Broderick was hired back in the beginning as Haley House’s business and marketing manager. “When we first opened I had no preconceptions about where things were going and in many ways it was her [Haley House founder Kathe McKenna] trying something new. I was excited about what might happen but not really knowing,” says Broderick by phone in a recent interview with Banner Biz.
Since then, the Café has expanded its business and evolved from selling baked goods and coffee — although it still offers those services and more — to catering, which is the largest part of today’s business. Haley House also serves as a hub for artistic and cultural programming activities. “A lot of what has happened at Haley House has not really been by our design. Many of the things that have happened have been opportunities that have been brought to us mostly by members of the community,” explains Broderick.
Named Haley House executive director in November 2013 after McKenna stepped down, Broderick now has more responsibilities on his plate. Several years ago, as the landscape in Roxbury began to change, Haley House started to explore options for purchasing the building. McKenna’s first goal as executive director was to secure the price of the building. Earlier this year, Haley House was able to meet its goal, and then some. It purchased the building in which the Café is housed, along with the land directly in front of it, from the Mayo Group for $2 million. After countless hours of serving patrons and providing services to community members who call the Café home, Haley House has launched a new business venture: a gourmet pizza shop called Dudley Dough. The shop will be located in the Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building, right in the heart of Dudley Square. In addition to pizza, Dudley Dough may also offer homemade soups similar to those currently on the menu at Haley House Bakery Café.
Broderick signed the Bolling Building lease in early May, and Dudley Dough is slated to open sometime this summer. It will be managed by Luther Pinckney, who’s currently managing Lower Dot Dining in Dorchester and the former general manager of Darryl’s Corner Bar & Kitchen.
Author: Jared LeedsGaitskill Cleghorn Jr., and Audley Mills, Haley House employees.
The idea for another restaurant had been brewing for some time. For years, people continued to approach Broderick about replicating something similar in Uphams Corner, Codman Square and Mattapan Square. “All of these places made sense and resonated with us as something that we would like to do. Opening a restaurant that could be a catalyst for a commercial district was very much in line with what we felt like we were doing in Dudley,” says Broderick. It took several years, but now that the issue of fair wages grabs national headlines, Haley House came up with a concept “that would offer its employees a little bit more of a stake in the game.”
Not quite a cooperative but incorporating some of its principles, Broderick’s hope for Dudley Dough “Is to bring it up to a point where it is making a profit and then there will be some sort of profit-sharing for the staff.” He goes on to add, “I really want to see if we can create a replicable model that we could either take to other neighborhoods or give to other neighborhoods. It may be that it is a kit that we pass on or something. It was a huge accomplishment for us to purchase our café building in Dudley. That secured our place in a shifting landscape. We’re hoping to expand that and be able to offer more programming in that space.”
This article appears in the July issue of Banner Biz – click here to read full issue.
