We recently connected with Lenore Johnson and have shared our conversation below.

Lenore, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

For LenJo Bakes, the name came about quite organically really! I was working as a residence life don at the University of Waterloo and nicknames were big. If you take the first 3 letters of my first name and the first 2 letters of my last, you get LenJo. My friend was also on our team and her nickname was DanJo. We were in connected buildings and we were known as LenJo and DanJo! I used to spend each Friday night watching all of the wedding-related reality TV shows on TLC with another friend and hers was my very first wedding cake I was going to make. We wanted to make it “professional” and she suggested LenJo Bakes because it was who I was and what I did. That was it!

Funnily enough, DanJo ended up creating the branding for LenJo Bakes 6 years before our storefront came to fruition and is now a wildly successful entrepreneur herself.

For our second location, The Shed, we just carried on the trend and called it what it was! When we opened originally, we were a pop-up located in…you guessed it: a shed! One that was less than 200 square feet, in fact. Even though we’ve now moved out of that little shed and into a beautiful space on the main street of St. Jacobs village, we are still The Shed: A Cafe by LenJo Bakes because we might as well keep a good thing going!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Lenore Johnson and I am the incredibly proud founder and owner of both LenJo Bakes, a bespoke cake studio in Midtown Kitchener, as well as The Shed: A Cafe by LenJo Bakes in the beautiful village of St. Jacobs.

I got into the food industry by following my passion, really! I went to the University of Waterloo for a math/business degree, knowing that when it was all over I really wanted to go to pastry school and pursue my passion of baking. I thought I’d work full-time in the corporate world and in the evenings and on weekends work in the bakery I owned. (Give me grace, I was 16 and full of ambition!). Well, after completing a few co-op terms in university I realized that the less time I spent in the traditional corporate world, the happier I was!

I applied and was accepted to George Brown College for their baking and pastry arts program and somehow convinced my academic advisor to approve 4 economics classes at Ryerson to be approved to satisfy my remaining credit requirements at uWaterloo. I did my first year at George Brown concurrently with my last year at Waterloo – it was SO hard, but so worth it! In between my first and second year at GBC, I went to France to attend a French pastry school and work in a restaurant and that was my first foray into the industry proper and what an education it was! I learned the value of hard work, the difficulty of being the “new person” in the kitchen, and how to handle myself in racist and misogynistic environment.

Once I finished at GBC, I moved to London, England to work in a Michelin-starred restaurant and other luxury 5-star properties. If I thought I knew about hard work before, working 80-90 hours a week in a relentless environment that demanded perfection at all times was the crash course I didn’t know I needed. After my visa was up in England, I wanted to keep travelling and moved to Waiheke Island, New Zealand! I was an executive pastry chef for one wedding season before opening LenJo Bakes as a pop-up bespoke cake studio on the island for the remainder of my time there (about 18 months).

Throughout all of these experiences, I learned more about the value of food, the value of local producers, the value of community, the value of hard work, the value of great customer service, and the desire for customers to have ease in a process.

I’ve taken all of those lessons and put them in to what we offer at LenJo Bakes and The Shed. We make absolutely everything we sell from scratch (no bucket jams over here!) and take great pride in sourcing local produce whenever we can. We try to make our process of ordering bespoke cakes (especially wedding cakes) incredibly easy because we know just how challenging everything else in planning a wedding is!

But most importantly, I learned how to value the people that I work with – both staff and producers – and how to let them know they are valued. LenJo Bakes and The Shed are places that people feel welcome and proud to be a part and that’s really my goal as a business owner.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I think the biggest thing that helped build our reputation within the market was consistency. Product was consistently delicious, service was consistently excellent, and the experience by a vast number of our customers was really good.

If multiple people with varied experience can all come to the consensus that what you’re doing is good each and every time it won’t take a lot of time for that word to spread.

We didn’t (and still don’t) advertise. We rely on other people talking about us, because then that reference already comes with positive reinforcement.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

This is the one aspect of business ownership that I never really considered: what it would be like to lead people.

The benefit is that although I was a natural leader in group projects (any one else just want to get things done?!), I had also been led in a variety of experiences before. I remember my first boss and being someone who was relatable, but was still able to lay down the law when required. I didn’t fear her, but I did respect her.

I also remember bosses who were degrading and mean and unkind – just because. They thought it spurred on excellence (why would anyone mess up when you knew you were going to get an earful for the rest of the day?) but it also harboured resentment. I still hate that man for the things he said that, although I know them to be categorically untrue, reverberate in my head in times when I’m feeling low about myself.

I never ever ever ever want to be that voice in someone’s head. My correction isn’t criticism – it’s an aim to make you better. You can be a GREAT boss and have a great team and have great morale – it’s possible!

The easiest way to do it is to see the folks that work with you as human, treat them with respect and earn theirs, show them while you tell them and they’ll retain it better, and never show yourself to be “too important” to answer questions or wash dishes, or mop floors. I spend a lot less time in the kitchen now than I did in the beginning stages of my business, but my staff know that I’m always available to answer a question or refresh a technique or anything else. I also give them (as a collective) autonomy for what we do on in the shop. They work together to create menus, bring their ideas, and more. I love empowering them and they love being supported.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.lenjobakes.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/lenjobakes
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/lenjobakes
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lenorej/
• Other: Please give credit to my photographer for the photo! Julie Baxter at JD Photography. www.jdphoto.ca

Image Credits
Julie Baxter (initial shot) Wall of Bakers, Food Network (TV show photo) Byte Sizes Co. (Lenore in front of LenJo Bakes) Mango Studios (cake) Lenore Johnson (rest)