Bakery duo grow and adapt with their customers

SHARON PURVIS | CONTRIBUTOR
Photography by Carol B. Stewart

TR couple’s bakery and bistro rooted in a sense of community

Since the opening of the Swamp Rabbit Trail in 2009, the number of businesses in Travelers Rest has exploded, and on a beautiful spring day, those businesses are bustling with tourists. Among them is Upcountry Provisions Bakery and Bistro, owned by Cheryl and Stephen Kraus, and while they certainly get a number of the Swamp Rabbit tourists, their immediate community is a bigger focus.

Cheryl grew up in Taylors but moved to Travelers Rest while she was a student at Furman (studying business with a focus on social entrepreneurship), living in a house with her future sister-in-law. Stephen’s family is from St. Louis. His parents owned the house Cheryl was living in. Their long-distance relationship eventually led to marriage and putting down roots in Travelers Rest.

Those roots produced Upcountry Provisions Bakery and Bistro, and the community has responded.

Cheryl’s mother-in-law was the first to suggest that Travelers Rest needed a bakery, and that idea appealed to them. Stephen had a head start in his knowledge of bread baking, his wife says, since he had worked in the pizza business, but “we both have an entrepreneurial streak, and we had been talking about what we could do.”

Initially, the couple looked at a franchise model of Great Harvest, and they traveled all over the country visiting Great Harvest bakeries, stopping at a lot of independent bakeries along the way, too. Ultimately, they decided they didn’t want to be limited by a franchise recipe book. Part of the Great Harvest model included sending franchise owners to bread baking school. Cheryl learned that they could just as easily get their own education and be free to have the kind of bakery they wanted, so they enrolled in the “serious amateur” program at the French Culinary Institute in New York City.

Cheryl’s initial idea was to have a commercial bakery but one of the qualities that make the couple successful in their business is their willingness to be attuned to what customers want and being flexible enough to give it to them. “What was happening was, people were coming for the sandwiches, and then they would buy cookies to take home,” she says.

That flexibility and willingness to adapt came in handy when, six weeks after Upcountry Provisions opened, they learned Cheryl was pregnant. “I took on a more administrative role while Steve built out the bistro part of the business, focusing on menu items that the community responded to and fit with our production capabilities.” With only one baker, the labor-intensive danish had to go.

Two babies and nearly four years later, they have a flourishing business with four full-time and four part-time employees, and they are poised to take it to the next level. “We had looked at opening in West Greenville, but … we have decided to stay in TR and build on our existing restaurant and grow with our local community,” Cheryl says.

Boxed lunch catering has grown organically from their customer base: “We had regular customers who would ask, ‘Can I get a bunch of these sandwiches for a meeting that’s coming up?’” Cheryl says, and Stephen jumps in: “And we always say ‘yes’.” That part of the business has been steadily growing, and Cheryl hopes to bolster an already brisk farmers market business — she’s applied to three additional markets for this year, and if they’re accepted, she will hire a seasonal crew to staff them.

Last fall, they purchased a wooded lot next door, and their vision is to keep it park-like, with no permanent structures, as an event space for weddings, parties, concerts, or just overflow for people to take their lunch and sit outside. Currently, there is a pile of logs on the lot that will be turned into rustic seating.

That will happen in time for Bovinoche, a pork-themed event that has in the past been held in Simpsonville, but is moving to TR and will be held at Upcountry Provisions. Food will be provided by chefs Greg McFee of Restaurant 17 and Steve Goff of the Blind Pig, along with pit master Jeff Bannister, and the event will benefit the Green Beret Foundation and Meals on Wheels. Learn more: bovinoche.com.

Of their success, this far, Stephen says, “The difference between making it and not making it is social capital. We have jumped in and traded projects. If we need something we have a support group that we can call, and they’ll help us, and we’ll help them.”

Cheryl agrees: “For each new thing we do, new connections get made. Even though we own it, it really feels like a community space. The whole place has been built by the community.”

SMALL BITES //

Signature item

Peanut Butter Diablo—an oatmeal cookie sandwich with peanut butter filling. 10% of profit benefits a missionary family in Cameroon—the recipe was from their daughter.

The story of the logo

Stephan Kraus has a background in graphic design, and he designed the logo. The motorcycle is a drawing of a vintage motorcycle model given to him by his college roommate.