A popular Covington bakery is expanding ahead of its fifth anniversary.
North South Baking Company, located at 39 W Pike Street, is introducing a new lunch program and several new events. On Wednesday, the bakery soft-launched its lunch menu with three new sandwiches, a kale Caesar salad and a rotating selection of soups.
Sandwiches on the first menu include a turkey club with bacon, tomato and garlic dill aioli, a roasted veggie sandwich with zucchini, onions, peppers, tomato and whipped goat cheese — both on the bakery’s signature focaccia — and another sandwich with shaved ham, mustard, cornichon and Urban Stead Gouda on sesame long bread.
Owner/operator Kate Nycz said the expansion has been a long time coming, but she hasn’t had the proper staff to do so until now.
“From October through the end of the year, we’re going to be slowly adding more food options. A lot of it just depends on me having the support within my team … I have people I feel really comfortable growing a program with, and I did not have that before,” she said. “And this lunch program is all in preparation for what we’re building to. I guess you could call it ‘small plates.’ It will be Eastern European-inspired, because I am primarily Czech and Polish, and obviously it will be seasonal (ingredients). But it’s going to be food that’s been inspired by how I eat and what I grew up eating. It will be food I’d cook for myself at home.”
Nycz moved into North South’s current space on Nov. 7, 2021, but she’s been baking professionally for over 15 years now. A New Jersey native, she came to Cincinnati for the first time in 2017 while researching bakeries across the country in hopes of opening her own spot somewhere in the United States.
“I saw a huge potential here for what I wanted to do, and recognized that Cincinnati was definitely a food city. Definitely likes to eat, likes to drink. Definitely very proud of what the region produces. So I just up and moved here on a whim, and started doing it, totally by myself,” she said. “Covington Farmer’s Market was the first place I was selling retail. And I just remember thinking, like, oh, if I could just make $500 at this farmers market on Saturdays, I will be okay.”
Nowadays, she runs a highly successful bakery with more than 30 employees, well known for its croissants, breakfast sandwiches, cookies, pastries and ‘cruffins’ (croissant muffins) — and customers happily wait in line every day, whether it’s at the Covington location or one of her many farmers’ market stops across the city.
A major focus for Nycz is spotlighting the local suppliers who give her the fresh ingredients she uses. Often, she’ll buy the ingredients for her food at the same farmer’s markets she’s selling her products at.
“I source my stuff directly from a lot of farmers. I don’t really use distributors. I love having connections within my community through my business, because I’m just — I don’t know. We’re all trying to survive late stage capitalism in the best way possible. That’s kind of the mentality in the bakery,” she said. “We all need to make money to live, but also, we like doing what we do. So I often think about, ‘how can we do this in a way that has a positive impact on the community and on the people we source from and for the people we serve?'”
She proceeds to list some of her most-used suppliers in the area, and the list is endless. This week, for a butternut squash soup, she’s turning to the Eaton Farmer’s Market for the squash. For the greens in the sandwiches, she’s headed to Farm Beach Bethel. In an upcoming miso-mushroom melt, she’s already in talks with Rich Life Farm & Fungi in New Richmond for sourcing. She delves into local honey, where she gets her eggs, the process behind the stone-milled flour she uses when baking sourdough, and more. Mid-sentence, she cuts herself off — “Sorry, I could talk all day about this stuff.” It’s hard not to believe her.
On Saturday, Nov. 7, for the brick-and-mortar’s five-year anniversary, Nycz has plenty planned throughout the week. She’ll host a tattoo event inside the bakery that Saturday, and a “girl dinner” sometime after as a prototype for future food options. More is still to come, although she’ll announce what else is coming closer to the day of.
Alongside the aforementioned lunch program and future small plates, North South will eventually expand into an “all-day cafe.” Nycz teased plans for an espresso program, a selection of natural wine, and future events in the evening to turn the bakery into a community hub. It’s all possible now that she’s no longer going it alone.
“I just feel like I’ve been accumulating like a lot of really fantastic people on my team that are just giving me such a strong foundation to keep building on,” she said. “I do feel like we’re gonna fill a void in the community, in both Northern Kentucky and all of Cincinnati, with what we’ll provide. Being able to have events, have music and do all kinds of stuff. Because everything in the bakery and on the menu is what I like, or what I want to do. And that’s really exciting.”
North South Baking Company is open Wednesday through Sunday at its Covington location, and can be found at several farmer’s markets across the Cincinnati region. For more information, visit the bakery’s official website.
