Today we’d like to introduce you to Kasia Mierzejewska and Emilia Augustyn.
Kasia and Emilia, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
My sister (Emilia Augustyn) and I (Kasia Mierzejewska) moved to the USA from Poland in 2015. The same year we have opened our pastry/coffee shop.
I used to work in Warsaw, I was leading off some of the European Union Funding Projects and my sister was working as a logistics manager in Hospital in town Elk. I have graduated from Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, and my sister graduated Academy of Finance and Management. So we were both doing something totally different in our lives and were leaving 4 hrs drive from each other.
Whenever we met, we would make together, have a nice glass of wine and talk about doing something together, possibly moving somewhere closer. We always enjoyed baking and cooking together. We never took any classes or anything, but we would just do it for our families. One time we went together to the food truck festival and tried Hungarian chimney cakes, totally fall in love with the taste. They were not available anywhere back then so we baked our own.
Since we used to live in Chicago for 2 years back in 2005, we were thinking about moving back to the USA together. We truly enjoyed living in IL, and always wanted to come back. But it was never that easy anymore since we both went to college in Poland, my sister got married, had a baby. Even though we would think about going back to the states, it was unreachable for some time.
Then one day during some holiday we were all spending time together and made a decision to move along with our plan because as my mom said: “if we don’t do it now, we will never do it”. For quite some time we were saving money and planning on how we are going to open a store in the USA without knowing anybody and without basic knowledge on how to run a business in a different country.
It wasn’t easy but we have finally moved and after few months found a perfect spot in downtown Barrington. Took us a bit to do remodeling since we didn’t have a lot of money most of the remodeling we have done on our own. It was a hard work but we went through with it. When we first opened nobody knew what chimney cake was so every time we would explain our customers over and over how it’s made to order and what the origin is and all of that. It was hard to encourage people to try them, but when we did everyone liked them.
For a year the business was doing ok, but we were much busy….. most of the time we would sit with our customers, have a coffee…. we would just mainly focus on our relationship with the customers, at some point most of them became our good friends. Then one day a week after our first anniversary BuzzFeed rated us number one donut shop in the state of Illinois basing on our excellent reviews on the Internet. Then ABC mentioned us in their afternoon news and in a couple of days, we were basically all over media, daily herald, Kiss FM, and other media sources would talk about us and a lot of people become more and more familiar to the Chimney Cakes.
For the summer we came up with the new idea, we have changed the shape of the Chimney Cake and filled them with fruits and a scoop of ice-cream and then WGN TV posted on Facebook about us and we hit more than 60000o views and again many media sources would talk about us. For this Christmas we came up with the idea of putting Chimney Cake in a cloud made of Cotton Candy, it looked amazing and FOX TV invited us to Good Day Chicago to go live. So we just keep on working very very hard, coming up with a new idea.
My sister Emilia became such a great baker (not only chimney cake but the fancy cake for different occasion, birthday cake, graduation cakes etc) that we got a call from Food Network since they wanted to talk to her about participating in the Holiday Baking Championship. Unfortunately, due to a lot of work she had to turn down the invitation.
So that was pretty much a long story short. We had our up and downs, but always stayed true to each other, and supported each other in bad and good times.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
It was very hard for the first year. We are serving Chimney Cakes and back then before they became a THING, most of the people had no clue what that was and they were definitely not willing to try it.
The dough is made fresh every hour or two. Since it has to be fresh and made to order a lot of time if we don’t sell, we have to throw away the dough and make a fresh one.
So we used to had a lot of loss. It was hard since we wanted to keep the dough as fresh as possible for our customers, but there were simply not coming, so every two hours we would keep on throwing our products. But we knew that quality is the most important thing and sooner or later people may want to try it and we have to provide something as fresh and as good as possible.
As sisters, we were trying to support each other, but sometimes frustration would get to us and we used to have days that we wouldn’t speak a word to each other. After all, we invested all the money and plenty of time for our dream business that did not bring any profit and it was hard…. but we kept believing even though we tried thousands of different ways of marketing and nothing seemed to work.
We knew that if we loose faiths in our products, we might as well close down and give up. Then October 4th a week before getting popular thanks to BuzzFeed we made a promise to each other to hold on for a little bit longer and stay positive.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about The Heart Europe Cafe – what should we know?
The Heart of Europe Cafe is a small coffee/bakery shop specialized in making chimney cakes. What makes us unique is that we are baking during the day, so every couple of hours we are trying to bake and bring something right out of the oven for people to enjoy fresh pastry with a great cup of coffee. Every day there is something different in our deli case.
Everything is baked with a lot of hopes of bringing a little bit of joy to someone’s day! With each bite of chimney cakes, you can taste the joy that comes from working together. Chimneys are made to order so each time we bake them fresh and serve them hot for our customers.
The Chimney Cake comes with toppings on the outside, such as cinnamon, M&M’s, Oreos, sprinkles, vanilla, walnuts or coconut; and fillings like Nutella, peanut butter, and honey on the hollow inside. Its tower shape results from the baker swirling a rope of simple yeast dough around a cooking rod.
You won’t find Kurtos anywhere else in the state and nearby states, this is why we even have customers from Missouri, Wisconsin, and Colorado came by for a treat.
The most proud we are for our atmosphere, whoever comes in, people always talk about how nice it is inside. The café’s eclectic décor mirrors that of trendy coffee houses in Europe. Tiffany-style lamps hang from the ceiling and rest atop elegant, vintage tables. Comfy, mismatched upholstered chairs in artsy patterns beg for customers to take a seat and relax while they nosh.
There is a stack magazine, books, and board games to choose from, kids play area equipped with child-sized seating, and brilliant-colored paintings on the walls complement of the Barrington Cultural Center, that is switched out on a regular basis and available for purchase.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
The person that deserves the most credit for our success is our mom. She would never lose faith in us, in the most financially critical moments in the first year of opening she would come in with the finest ingredients and fruits and asks us to make something special for our customers even though they might not come and we might end up eating all of it at home. She would be there for us whenever we needed her, and she would never pity us.
Whenever we were down and feeling like we were going to lose our battle for the Store, she would yell at us and tell us to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and get back to work. A lot of times after her work she came over to our place just to help us clean, bake and make sure that everything is in order at the shop.
Contact Info:
- Address: 113 S Cook St
- Website: http://theheartofeuropecafe.com/
- Phone: 8728089321
- Email: heartofeuropecafe@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heartofeuropecafe/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heartofeuropecafe
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-heart-of-europe-cafe-barrington
Image Credit:
Magda Marczewska
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