Wake Up and Smell the Bread, Ashburn

If you’ve driven past Cameron Chase Village Center in Ashburn in the past week, you may have smelled the fresh bread baking. Alright, maybe not from your car, but if you take one step inside the , which just opened in that location, your olfactory senses will be filled with that sweet aroma and you’ll be hard-pressed to leave the store without a loaf, or two, in hand.

The newest Great Harvest Bread Company store is owned by Ashburn residents Tim and Jessie Groszkowski and is bringing fresh, healthy, simple breads made with whole grains to town.

“We are super excited about our new location,” said Jessie Groszkowski who, with her husband, also owns stores in Herndon and Vienna. “We’ve heard from our customers for years that they wanted us to come out to Ashburn. Now we hope that just saying our name will bring a big smile to people’s faces.”

Great Harvest bread is made fresh every morning (the bakers turn on the ovens at 4 a.m.!), with natural ingredients like yeast, salt and honey. The company does not use any additives, preservatives, chemicals, dough conditioners or ingredients that you cannot pronounce and they never add water to a mix or bake off a frozen product that was delivered by a truck.

In addition to delicious favorites like apple scrapple bread, honey whole wheat, old-fashioned white, challah, raisin cinnamon chip and 9-grain, Great Harvest bakes dinner rolls, quick breads, scones, cookies and even doggie bones. The store ships boxes around the country and provides gift baskets and gift cards. The bakery also carries a variety of local products, such as jams and honey, and sells fresh brewed coffee to go along with the great tasting breads.

Something else that helps the place stand out is that you will always see the owner in the store. “I’ll be here every day,” said Jessie Groszkowski.

Goszkowski and her husband want to be involved in the community that they serve and are thrilled to be located in the heart of Ashburn. Because they do not sell the bread after it’s 24 hours old, they donate leftovers to LINK Inc., a nonprofit emergency support organization that provides donated food to people in need. The Great Harvest owners will also be donating products to local schools, churches and other nonprofit organizations.

“We don’t do a lot of advertising, so donations are our way of marketing,” said Groszkowski. “It’s a win-win.”

The store operates from 7 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays. Everyone who walks through the door gets a free slice of bread.

“These aren’t small samples,” said Groszkowski, “we give our customers hearty slices of bread.  We want people to enjoy our bread—it’s one of our ways of saying thank you.”