For the past year, Black Jet Baking Co. has been making cookies and hand pies -- artisanal Pop-Tarts, you could call them -- for cafes around the city, including Ritual Roasters and Matching Half. Founder Gillian Shaw started baking at Moose's back in the day, then moved on to Liberty Cafe, where she ran the bakery, and Brown Sugar Kitchen. She runs the business with fellow Liberty alumnus Max Newman.
A few months ago, Shaw and Newman got a call from the women from the management firm that oversees the Ferry Building. "They were at the Ritual stand at Flora Grubb and had one of our pop tarts," Shaw says. "They wanted us to come in and give them a preview of what we might want to sell there. It knocked our socks off."
The meeting went well: On August 15, Black Jet Baking Co. will take over the Alfieri Farms kiosk at the south end of the building, next to the El Porteño kiosk and across the hall from the entrance to Sur La Table.
Shaw says she'll sell hand pies -- SFoodie's favorite is the hazelnut Nutella -- as well as full-sized pies and a variety of cookies and bars. "We'll have chocolate chip with Malden sea salt, caramelized coconut macaroons, oatmeal boozy raisin, a fun PB&J cookie, and chocolate cream sandwich cookies," she says.
The kiosk is a short-term lease, but both the Ferry Building reps and Shaw hope that it will lead to a long-term tenancy, and perhaps even a bigger space. "I go from super excited to having waves of nausea," she says, "but mostly, I'm super excited."
