Recipe for Retail Success at Cieslak's

Sometimes the best way to stay modern is to remain traditional.

As enters its 77th holiday season on South Wellwood Avenue, that’s the lesson of the day from owner Eileen Biggs.

Sticking with original recipes that made her family’s generations-strong retail bakery a fixture in the heart of Lindenhurst, Cieslak's has been able to weather changing economic and retail times and remain a vital business in "family-friendly" village.

“This is a great town,” said Biggs recently, taking a break from the holiday rush. “People who grew up here move on, but they come back. And we have a big wide main street. It’s beautiful.”

Like her customers - many of whom not only have multi-generational family roots in Lindenhurst, but also have continued to call the community in which they grew up home - Biggs has been working at the shop since sixth grade.

And her mother Eleanor Zacher, though 87, still works at the store.

“She comes in a little, here and there, [and] puts her two cents in,” said Biggs.

The result is a family and community tradition, in a village with plenty of traditions, and it's been able to remain durable through decades.

Of course the retail climate is challenging these days, she admitted.

“It could be better. But it’s not as bad as when Grumman closed,” she said. “A lot of people were without work then.”

A more general challenge the Modern Bakery has faced, as have other retailers on South Wellwood, has been the advent of strip malls and large-scale chain operations.

“But we’ve been able to survive that by specializing,” said Biggs.

Like two other mom-and-pop bakeries in Lindenhurst, Cieslak's sticks to tried and true recipes - and preparation methods - that have retained customer loyalty for decades.

“We bake all our products from scratch - cookies, cakes, breads - and from the basic recipes which we created years ago. Small shops have to do that; you can’t get that in supermarkets,” she explained.

Particularly during the holiday season. “This is our busiest time,” she said this past week. “Bavarian Christmas stollen. Gingerbread men. Kris Kringles. Pfeffernüsse.”

It's a recipe that Biggs hopes will result in Cieslak's Modern Bakery remaining a fixture on South Wellwood well into the future.

“I hope to be here for many years to come,” she said, adding, “God willing - and unless I win Lotto.”