Stuffed 406s storefront on March 23. Stuffed 406 offers unique stuffed donuts, with either ice cream or cream cheese.
The bell on the door chimes as patrons walk into Tandem Bakery and Cafe. Before them is a menu filled with vegan and gluten-free cakes, cupcakes and donuts. The bakery itself sits on Helen Avenue and is one of Missoula’s many dessert shops.
Desserts and sweet treats are a core tenet within the average college student’s survival pack.
In particular, “sweet treat” culture helps to define the generational obsession of dessert, a trend that highlights college and high school age students going out with their friends and socializing while eating desserts.
Beyond the trend, each small business has a strong driving force behind its creation keeping people coming back for more.
Working in Tandem
Located among fraternity and sorority houses in the University district, Tandem Bakery & Cafe is known for serving only gluten-free and vegan desserts.
The shop opened its doors in March 2022 and is coming up on its four-year anniversary in the building. Co-owners David Tyson and his wife, Beth Gherlein, named the shop after a date they had.
“My wife and I met in Chicago, and maybe a month after we’d been dating, she saw a Craigslist ad for a 1963 Schwinn Twinn tandem bike for sale,” Tyson said. “We went in on it as a joint purchase. So we would ride the tandem together throughout Chicago, bar hopping.”
Tyson said this inspired the couple to name the store after this memory, along with the metaphor behind a tandem bike. He said when two people ride the bike, they have to work together, and are always “helping each other to move forward.”
The store specializes in vegan and gluten-free bakery products, and focuses on inclusivity by serving customers with dietary restrictions. Tyson said about 90% of their products are scratch-made, including fillings, frostings and buttercreams.
“For a long time, our name was Tandem Donuts, so people will come in for that,” Tyson said. “I think that [the] oat bar is pretty delicious. I think those are the things that we sell the most, pop tarts, oat bars and donuts.”
Stuffed with memories
Another local business specializing in donuts is Stuffed 406, owned by Hannah Kirk. The store is located on Broadway, right in front of the Missoula County offices.
Kirk, like the owners of Tandem, was similarly inspired to start a ice cream- stuffed donut business by a date0 sh0e had at a similar donut shop with her husband nine years ago. Kirk thought the concept could be a fun idea to recreate at home, and eventually, it turned into a food truck.
After creating a donut recipe and trying multiple variations to get the right sweetness, Kirk said she thought a lot about the ice cream to fill the donut. The decision was ultimately inspired by a family memory.
“I grew up kind of like, halfway, in Bozeman, my dad lived there,” Kirk said. “So whenever I had school breaks, I’d go to Bozeman. I always had Wilcoxson’s ice cream when I came to Montana, and so I was like, ‘Oh, we have to try it with the Wilcoxson’s ice cream to make sure that it’ll pair well,’ because that’s the one I would want to use if we were to do the business.”
Kirk said when creating the business with her husband, she “wanted everything to mean something.” With this goal, she said, her business is centered around Montana and using local ingredients.
“The name Stuffed 406, the idea behind it, is like ‘Stuffed with Montana,’” Kirk said. “So all our ingredients, we try our hardest to source them from Montana, if not around the community. So that means that we’re using Montana flour when we make our donuts and our brownies, the Wilcoxons’ ice cream. We use Kalispell Kreamery milk, and we also sell it, eggs, anything that could be sourced, we have as much as we can.”
Another inspiration for the business is “sweets at night,” pushing to have a desire for her business, even if in food truck form, to be open super late. This is reflected in their current hours, with the store staying open till 3 a.m. on Friday and Saturday
Kirk said social media has been a big part of the identity as a dessert business due to their desserts being “very Instagrammable.”
“I think people really like to enjoy what they’re looking at before they eat it, and so I think that is part of that college culture. We get tagged in a lot of photos, and I think that helps boost our business, because it’s like that overindulgent, in a way, sweetness of the photo to like the taste,” Kirk said.
Rolling in trends
Another local business owner who noted the use of social media to attract customers was Frankie Yuan, the owner of Tea & Crepe Missoula. First opening stores in Grand Forks and Fargo, North Dakota prior to 2020, it was not until 2022 that the third store opened in Missoula.
John Shelton scoops ice cream at Sweet Peaks in Missoula on March 5.
Yuan said he wanted a location in a college town in order to draw in business from younger people looking for fun desserts. By opening downtown, he could catch business from patrons leaving restaurants. “They also have a lot of visitors who will come downtown,” Yuan said. “Just like walking around, they will see us and try us.”
The store stands on the corner of East Main Street and Higgins. Yuan said the store specializes in lots of desserts, including boba tea. This practice is one rooted in experience, and learning and seeing what works firsthand in other parts of the world.
“Before we opened the first store in North Dakota, me and my friend went to Thailand,” Yuan said. “We saw those ice cream they sell by the street, and we were like, ‘Oh, it’s very nice, if we open a business, we can sell the ice cream, and we can also sell some boba tea.’”
He said what makes the store unique is the freshly made rolled ice cream and crepes.
“Fresh-made ice cream is made with fresh fruits they can make in front of you, and we get the fresh fruits every day from the grocery store,” Yuan said. “The thing we’re very proud of is our crepe. We are focused on the quality, and all the fruits are fresh and nice, and our crepe is like a Japanese-style crepe, so it’s not too sweet.”
Yuan said one of the most popular items sold is the classic crepe, which has strawberry and banana, with or without Nutella. He said a lot of their business is made up of college students from the dorms, as well as those who view their rolled ice cream and crepes on social media.
“This is a very good place for me to live, and to open a business here,” Yuan said. “I like to see people reorder from us, and I like to see those smiling faces after they eat the dessert. They will come to me, they will say, ‘Oh, it’s so delicious.’ I feel so good at the moment, you know, this is what we’re trying to do.”
Sweet at its peak
Sweet Peaks Ice Cream, an ice cream store owned and founded by Marissa Keenan, is another Montana business centered around community.
Growing up in Big Fork, Keenan found her love for ice cream through traveling to the East Coast.
“I have always loved ice cream, mostly because I used to go visit a bunch of my family on the East Coast, and going out for ice cream was an adventure,” Keenan said. “It was an event, it was something that you did, it was social. You stood in the lines, you got to pick your flavors … I felt like we didn’t have that in Montana, at least when I was growing up.”
Keenan’s original idea for the shop surrounded making ice cream sandwiches in the shape of mountain peaks and calling it Sweet Peaks, which eventually turned into an ice cream shop. She opened her first store in 2010 in Whitefish, with locations now in Bozeman, Kalispell and Missoula.
Keenan highlighted the social connection in going out for ice cream, explaining the positive aspect of being able to stand in line and connect with people you otherwise wouldn’t have the chance to.
“Part of the experience of going out for ice cream is that you get to stand in line, you get to talk to the people in line with you,” Keenan said. “It’s really great, and something that we wanted to recreate at Sweet Peaks, and that’s where we are. So going out for ice cream is, like 99% of the time, people that show up are already happy, anticipating something awesome and delicious, and we get to make them happier. And that’s like a pretty awesome gift.”
Keenan said they try to have a variety of flavors that everyone likes. She said that every store “becomes part of the community and the fabric that we’re in as well.”
“I hire people now that their first memories of ice cream involve Sweet Peaks, and that, to me, is such a full circle moment,” Keenan said. “I talk a lot with my new staff that’s coming in, ‘What’s your first memory of ice cream? What’s your favorite ice cream memory?’ because I think that taste creates a connection, whether it’s good, bad or whatever.”
Keenan also commented on the significance of Missoula in Sweet Peaks’ culture, stating that the people in Missoula is what helps to define the brand and the mission of the store.
“I love the Missoula community,” Keenan said. “There’s a great business community. I’m so lucky to be in that downtown core. I’m on a group text with a handful of female business owners, and they’re so supportive. There’s a connective tissue there that I really, really appreciate.”
Hannah Kirk prepares a donut on March 23 at Stuffed 406, in downtown Missoula.
Keenan said that what makes Sweet Peaks unique is her mission to be intentional about the ingredients used in the ice cream, and the staff that carry out the joy behind ice cream. This, she said, helps support her goal to use Montana products.
“I think we stand out because we are very intentional about our ingredients, and we’re very intentional about our flavors,” Keenan said. “It matters to me that there is at least a couple of flavors on the menu at all times that have some story that has to do with some other Montana connection. I think that is a really big differentiator for us, and it is what makes Sweet Peaks, what it is.”
