Carley’s chocolate chip cookies had just the right amount of rock salt on top. Available at Bank Square Coffee House, they were easily this blogger’s first favorite chocolate chip cookie on Main Street in Beacon. Carley delivered her cookies by stroller to the coffee house, as well as other wholesale accounts she developed as a young mother cooking from her certified home kitchen. Ella’s Bellas is named after her daughter, who has a gluten allergy.

Carley wasn’t the only one in Beacon to have a certified home kitchen. There were and are several off-the-radar professional bakers and cooks. But she is one of the few who has moved out of her home kitchen to open a storefront in Beacon, pop up in other cafés with outposts in Cold Spring and elsewhere, and open another storefront in the Catskills.

Eight years later, Carley is stepping aside as the proprietor of Ella’s Bellas at 418-420 Main Street, handing over the reins to new owners. During tonight’s City Council meeting, when it came time to give his weekly report, council member Terry Nelson thanked Carley for her service to the community.

EDIT 2/22/2020: Carley retains ownership and recipes of Ella’s Bellas as a brand, and “may do something down the road,” she tells A Little Beacon Blog. The new owners “purchased the building, equipment, and kickass staff,” Carley confirmed.

Carley is one of those business owners who experiments. She experiments with giving - she donated a consumer refrigerator to the Beacon Community Kitchen when they first opened a handful of years ago. She experiments with marketing ideas, like the oyster-filled dance parties she used to have with Drink More Good. And of course, she experiments with baking and has the most delicious gluten-free shop one could ever ask for. And I’m not even gluten-free, but I could order anything from her menu and be totally satisfied.

Announced on her personal @dogsofellas Instagram page, while simultaneously the shop account gave a 10-year birthday nod to the biz (the Beacon brick-and-mortar shop has been open for eight years), Carley illuminated the reason behind her decision:

At some point I started to slow down... For years I rushed and stressed and focused on the needs of the people working for Ella’s, the building, my customers, and how to best provide for them. In the beginning, it was fulfilling and brought me great joy. I was living the strong working mom dream. I put my family and myself somewhere in the background and pushed to make the business grow and shine, but at some point I started to get tired, and I started seeking joy in the quiet and nature instead of crowds and excitement and the high of a busy day. I started to think of a life that focused on things other than the business, and my journey started to shift to where I am now…

Tomorrow will be my last day as proprietor of 418-420 Main St. Ella’s Bellas will still live in a familiar state for a few months while the new owners finalize their plans and I’ll still be around to help with this transition phase. Then I have no plans, and I’m really excited to just be.

I’ll be at the shop finishing up soup and various odds and ends tomorrow (Monday 11/18). Come by or leave me a song to add to the soundtrack of my last day as “boss lady.”

Formerly Unpublished Interview With Carley About Business and Family Life

About a year ago I was working on a story and reached out to Carley with a bunch of questions. I never published the story (only about 5 percent of my stories actually make it to these blog pages). Parts of the story had undertones of what she has just announced. Now that Carley has reached the end of her business life-cycle - or this business life-cycle, anyway - let’s read about the transition of her business from her home to Main Street, and maintaining its growth:

ALBB: Tell us about your early business life when you were delivering to local bakeries.

I started delivering almost 10 years ago to Bank Square Coffee House when [my daughter] Ella was around 14 months old. It was a family affair. My home kitchen was certified and I would bake when Ella napped or was down for the night. My husband would do dishes and late-night deliveries and Ella and I would walk the rest over in the stroller.

ALBB: Were you doing this before she was born?

No, I took time off of working to be at home with Ella. My previous career was in theater admin and production. I had worked in food service, but not as a trained baker.

ALBB: Did having a child help and/or slow your growth into opening your own shop?

Ella and many other factors contributed into the need to move the business out of the house and into a storefront. I would say that as we both get older, I find myself concentrating less on the growth of the business and more on making myself available to Ella and my family. That has definitely had an affect on our rate and amount of growth.

ALBB: Did having a child actually make you make decisions that grew your business faster? Like hiring employees, so that you could accommodate your child and family life?

Yes, having a child makes me have a more controlled work day and set schedule. I try to keep my work to her school hours (or camp hours) and I would often work after her bedtime or before she’s up in the morning. It meant that although I was responsible for creating and building many of the elements of Ella’s, once they were established, it was best for me to have a staff member take over that responsibility so I could concentrate on business growth and family.

In the early days, that meant adding staff. It’s also made it difficult to keep as many layers of the business operating. I can’t always jump back into the kitchen or behind the counter at this point, so we’ve gone from a large staff with a general manager to a smaller staff and smaller menu.

ALBB: When you opened the second location in the Catskills, was that business as usual by that point? Or did you need to make adjustments to your child and family life?

When I opened the business in the Catskills, I had a wonderful manager in place at Ella’s Bellas, so I basically spent several months bouncing back and forth and dragging my family along to help and keep me company. My husband has his own company and they did the renovations to the Catskills building. Ella’s Bellas was running with limited day-to-day needs from me at that point.

ALBB: How many years after opening your first location did you open your second?

Just under six years to opening, but we had been working on the project for eight months when it opened. So it’s really closer to five [years].

ALBB: Do you have family in town who helps you with childcare?

My mother-in-law is in town part-time, so that can be really helpful if we schedule it correctly. We were really lucky to have a wonderful former bakery employee turn into childcare help off and on over the years. She and Ella are still great friends and she's now a successful businesswoman and mother, too!

At the time of this interview, Ella’s Bellas was in several locations. The brand was available at all the Pantry locations, The Taste of NY at Todd Hill, Fresh in Hopewell Junction and their sister shop in the Catskills.

Business Advice From Carley:

I’ve learned that it’s easy to get wrapped up in growing organically, but that can distract from the core of your business. Never lose sight of what you want the business to become.