The front view of Mattarello Baked Goods in Winooski, which opened this year. Photo by Harrison Gaylord
Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship, on assignment for the Winooski News.
Walking inside Mattarello Baked Goods, a customer’s eye might be caught by the flower-adorned space — the rightmost wall is covered with them — or the collection of books from the “Dune” series displayed on one of the counters. Or, maybe more likely, visitors might be caught by the smell of coffee and cookies as they enter the shop right off the roundabout.
Led by couple Alma and Orhan Smailhodzic, who both are originally from Bosnia and now live in Essex, the quaint bakery is a pit stop for students after class or exhausted commuters after beating rush hour traffic.
Mattarello began as a specialty cake business out of the Smailhodzics’ home in Essex. The business started in late 2019 and expanded into Winooski recently this April, when the couple secured their space on Winooski Falls Ways. Alma left her full-time job as a banker to pursue baking. Now that the business has moved to Winooksi, the Smailhodzics are offering more than just cakes. Now, customers can buy cookies, croissants, cakes and other pastries at Mattarello.
“The reason we got into additional stuff, it has a lot to do with our location,” Orhan said on a recent afternoon inside the bakery. “We have lots of students around and wanted to make sure everyone could experience our baking. Originally, it was not our plan to go outside of cakes, but we saw an opportunity for it.”
Orhan came to the U.S. from Bosnia in 1994. In a Facebook post congratulating the couple’s Winooski opening, the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants said his family was among the first who resettled in Vermont. He and Alma knew each other as kids, he said, and they reconnected by chance after she too came to Vermont in 2014. Some items in the bakery show the Bosnian influence at Matterello.
The couple’s spanakopita, a Greek version of a spinach-filled Balkans pastry, is rolled rather than layered. “Greece, Turkey, Bosnia all have their own take on spanakopita, but what we sell here is typical Bosnian spanakopita,” Alma said.
To keep up with orders, the couple said they’re investing in more refrigerators. Going forward, the Smailhodzics expect to offer their cookies and slices of cake in local stores.
The store is new to Winooski, only six months old, and it has a bohemian feel compared to some bakeries and cafes in the area, with brass-trimmed furniture and a calm ambience. On a recent afternoon, a lanyard-clad worker was nursing coffee and clacking a keyboard while a couple on a date giggled and whispered. Some college students stopped in from the bus stop (just steps away from Matarello) to grab coffee.
The vibe inside, Orhan said, often follows the shopkeepers’ mood.
“Yeah, we mess around,” he said. “Everybody plays their own music depending on who is working up there. We have everything from reggae to Bosnian music, classical music, jazz, all types of stuff.”