Competition between businesses was set aside when a kitchen emergency befell a bakery in Evanston, Illinois. Hewn Bread’s oven recently broke and caused the employees to scramble to find a way to bake its bread dough.
“It just stopped dead, and nothing was happening,” Hewn co-owner Ellen King tells CBS Chicago. “This whole panel was black, like, you couldn’t turn it on. It just shut off.”
With thousands of dollars in dough already left to rise, Hewn was rescued by one of its competitors, nearby Bennison’s Bakery. Owner Jory Downer was one of several bakers who offered empty ovens to Hewn to use in the short term.
“I felt very bad for them, you know, they’ve got empty bread shelves,” says Jory Downer. “‘We’re not going to have any bread to sell because we don’t have an oven.’ How horrible is that?”
Since that time, Hewn has fixed its oven and is back to baking bread at its regular capacity. The compassion shown by Bennison’s to Hewn has caused the two bakeries to bond. The mutual respect between their owners is indicative of the community that forms with those in the baking industry.