The Abridged version:
- Freeport Bakery owners Marlene and Walter Goetzeler are selling the Land Park institution to Ettore’s Bakery & Café owner Lisa Calk.
- The Goetzelers founded Freeport Bakery nearly 40 years ago, and plan to retire.
- Calk purchased Ettore’s in 2018 after working there for 14 years.
After launching Freeport Bakery nearly 40 years ago, Marlene and Walter Goetzeler are selling the Land Park favorite to Lisa Calk, the owner of fellow institution Ettore’s Bakery & Café in Arden Arcade.
The Goetzelers are preparing to retire on Sept. 7, Marlene told Abridged by PBS KVIE on Tuesday morning, and began working out the sale with Calk in June.
Others had approached the Goetzelers about buying Freeport over the years, but they weren’t the right buyers, Marlene said. Calk and her daughter Veronica, Ettore’s general manager, have been Freeport customers for years, and the two bakeries share a symbiotic relationship, loaning each other ingredients and equipment when they’re in pinches.
“We know them, and we know what kind of people they are. We have really similar values, and it’s just a really good fit,” Marlene said. “They love Freeport, and they want to keep it just how it is. If anything, they’re just going to make it better.”
If the Goetzelers need retirement income, they could consider selling their life story to a TV or movie network. Marlene was working at a San Diego bookstore when Walter, who grew up working at his family’s Bavarian bakery in Germany, swept in on a motorcycle. She happened to be looking for a German tutor, and the match was made.
They moved up to Sacramento in hopes of opening a bakery in a less expensive landscape, bought Freeport in 1987 and turned it into one of the city’s most iconic culinary institutions. Freeport’s cakes and cookies became top-choice items for birthday parties, office celebrations and weddings, from fresh fruit tarts to chocolate-dipped shortbread.
Freeport unintentionally found international attention in 2016 when it obliged a customer’s request to top a cake with a Ken doll wearing a ball gown and tiara. Backlash flooded Freeport’s Facebook page after Marlene posted a photo of the cake, but additional orders soon overwhelmed the negative comments.
Asked what she’d miss most about Freeport, Marlene mentioned her longtime staff and families who have been coming to the bakery for multiple generations. It’s a similar story at Ettore’s, too.
“We both, I would say, cherish our employees, cherish the people that work with us and created a family over at Ettore’s as well as they have at Freeport,” Calk said. “There (were) just a lot of similarities, and so when the opportunity came up and they were ready to retire, it just was something that fell into place.
“We love Freeport Bakery. I love going over there. It’s going to stay Freeport.”
Cultivating a community
Swiss-born pastry chef Ettore Ravazzolo founded his namesake bakery in 1985 along Fair Oaks Boulevard, part of what became known as the “Gourmet Gulch.” Ravazzolo became something of a regional celebrity chef, expanded to Folsom and Roseville for brief spells and secured a contract baking cakes for Nugget Market, a deal that required expanding into a 5,000-square-foot commercial kitchen in Natomas.
But Ravazzolo and his then-wife, who managed the bakery’s marketing and the Nugget account, divorced in the mid-2010s, and Ettore’s filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2018. In came Calk, Ettore’s general manager at the time and an employee for 14 years, to purchase the bakery and restaurant.
Ettore’s has remained a choice spot under Calk’s ownership, for its European desserts as well as savory items. Abridged by PBS KVIE readers voted its burger (Niman Ranch beef with sautéed mushrooms and Swiss cheese on a housemade cheddar-scallion bun) as one of the region’s best earlier this year.
Freeport will remain separate from Ettore’s, Calk said, with the same recipes continuing in place at each. She’s considering introducing soups, salads and sandwiches to Freeport, but plans to otherwise keep it as is.
“We plan to run it as Freeport and cultivate the community that they did as they pass the baton on,” Calk said.
Walter will still help out at Freeport around the holidays, the bakery’s busiest season. Otherwise, he and Marlene plan to enjoy retirement.
“We’ve been so excited, nervous (and) apprehensive the past couple years about who would take it over. And now that the papers are signed, we kind of both looked at each other and said, ‘should we be sad now?'” Marlene said. “I’m sure it’s going to be different for us, really different. But it’s a good thing.”
