Strawberry Blonde Bakery

About the business

Strawberry Blonde Bakery bakes in Ottawa, and everything that leaves the kitchen is vegan, gluten-free, nut free and kosher.

The bakery describes its mission as making a place where people with alternative diets and food allergies can buy a treat without having to worry about cross contamination, and without giving up taste or looks.

The rule holds at the door of the kitchen. Gluten, wheat, eggs, dairy, peanuts and tree nuts are never used and never brought in, and the bakery asks its suppliers for a spec sheet on every ingredient. Soy and mustard do appear in some items and are flagged on the product pages; sesame is not used at all; the oats and oat milk are certified gluten-free. All of the baking is done on site.

The bakery's own site was already posting updates in 2013. On 1 January that year it announced it had gone completely gluten-free and nut free; by the end of March its products were on the shelf at Herb & Spice on Bank Street; and on 4 November 2013 it opened its first retail shop at 114B Grange Ave, near Wellington and Holland. By the summer of 2019 the contact page listed two shops, having added 767 Silver Seven Road in Kanata.

Today the counter is at 111 Richmond Rd in Westboro, open for walk-ins seven days a week, with a café serving soy, oat and coconut milk and no cow's milk at all. The Kanata shop is marked temporarily closed on the site, and Canada-wide shipping is paused. Orders are placed through the online store with a minimum of three days' notice, and custom cakes and sugar cookies go through the specialty orders address, with seven days for fondant, tiered or shaped cakes.

Beyond the two shops, the bakery wholesales across Ontario — its own map and list run from Ottawa grocers and hotels to Farm Boy stores as far away as London, Hamilton and Toronto. It delivers in the Ottawa and Gatineau area and is on Uber Eats, DoorDash and Skip the Dishes. Strawberry Blonde Bakery sponsored UAFest in 2024.