Perenn Bakery’s wildly successful first few years at The Village at Rancharrah has led owners Aubrey and Tyler O’Laskey to expand their footprint and open a retail grocery in the popular boutique shopping center.
This spring, the O’Laskeys will open an approximately 2,500-square foot grocery next door to Perenn Rancharrah bakery. Half the space that formerly housed Centro South is already being used by Perenn staff to prep all of their savory goods. The other half is being built out to be a specialty grocery and home goods shop to sell prepared foods, coffee, espresso drinks, and additional goods from local farmers and specialty retailers.
“We have outgrown this location,” Aubrey O’Laskey said recently amid the commotion and bustle of nearly full dining tables and the constant clinking of glass and dining ware at Perenn Rancharrah. “When we think of what we need to support this building, it’s prep space. Having that new space also frees up room for pastry production and fridge space.”
When the neighboring restaurant space came available this summer, the O’Laskeys jumped at the opportunity to take on additional retail space, especially since the building already had a fully functional kitchen.
“We have built out four commercial kitchen spaces, and it’s very expensive,” O’Laskey said. “And it’s so conveniently close. Our prep team is already working in half of the space, but that left half the building vacant.
“We felt a grocery would be a nice addition to The Village, as well as a great way for us to bring in items from other local farmers and producers,” she added. “Perenn is always busy, and the biggest feedback we have gotten is that customers don’t want to wait in line just to buy a loaf of bread or a coffee. Next door at the grocery we will have a full espresso bar, and customers will be able to buy bread and prepared foods. We see it as a complement to the bakery.”
Perenn Bakery opened in 3,660 square feet at The Village at Rancharrah in June 2021. The O’Laskeys’ opened the first Perenn bakery in an 800 square-foot space at St. Lawrence Commons in Midtown in 2018.
The couple met as aspiring chefs when they both attended the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. After graduating, they returned to Northern Nevada and began working as private chefs before founding Butter + Salt, a catering company based out of Reno. During the business’ eight-year run, the O’Laskeys mostly served clients in the Greater Lake Tahoe and Truckee areas and gained a reputation for their heavenly bread recipes.
Since they lived in Reno, however, they wanted to work closer to home, especially as they began growing their family, which now numbers six.
“We were craving a sense of community, and we knew opening a bakery would allow us to see our customers face-to-face and build a relationship with our patrons,” Aubrey adds. The O’Laskeys’ self-funded buildout of the Midtown location, purposely starting in a modest-sized location in order to learn and refine business operations.
“We knew when to put things into the hands of someone else,” Aubrey O’Laskey said. “The first thing we did was get an accountant, and we leaned on our accountant to learn how to read our profit and loss statement and adjust our business plan.”
The Midtown location opened just as work began on the Virginia Street renovation project, which disrupted traffic throughout the Midtown corridor. Soon after that project wound down, the pandemic hit, yet the business persevered.
“We were very fortunate that we had great patrons who were committed to coming to Perenn,” Aubrey O’Laskey said. “We never closed or let anyone go. Our sales actually increased. We attribute that to people leaning into small comforts like bread and pastries during the pandemic.”
Bakery items for Perenn’s Midtown location came from the Butter + Salt commercial kitchen off Longley Lane. However, with the bakery business booming, the O’Laskeys’ wound down catering operations in mid-2019.
Customer feedback at the Midtown location led them to search for a unique setting for their next Perenn location, but prior to The Village at Rancharrah opening, they couldn’t find a venue that felt right.
“The biggest thing we felt when we opened our Midtown location was that customers did not feel like they were in Reno,” O’Laskey said. “They said they felt like they were in a European bakery. When we considered where we would go next, there really wasn’t a place that evoked that feeling.”
Perenn Bakery was one of the first businesses to open its doors at The Village at Rancharrah. The O’Laskeys closed their commercial kitchen and moved all operations under one roof.
“We knew this would be our flagship location, and all baking would be done here,” O’Laskey said. “We follow very tight projections, and when we did a projection for our Rancharrah location, we scaled what we were doing at Midtown by 2.5. We have done about double that. This location is producing way more than we ever anticipated, and that’s why we are expanding with a grocery.”
Perenn employs just under 90 people, though some of those employees work at the O’Laskeys’ restaurant concept, Claio, a Greek-ish Rotisserie at Mayberry Landing. It also is open for brunch serving specialty-curated pastries from Perenn. Aubrey O’Laskey said perhaps the most important aspect of owning a flourishing food and beverage company is knowing when to make a pivot or next move.
“We are fortunate that we found a niche in the community with what we are making,” she said. “The theory behind our business has been organic growth with very limited marketing and not overextending ourselves. We are very careful in how we grow. We have found that pivoting and never stopping learning and educating ourselves in business and our craft is tremendously important.”
