Jewish Community News

News: May 2008

Israeli couple opens new bakery in Pruneyard

Eight years ago Irit Ishai and her husband Moty Aharonovitz moved to the Silicon Valley from Tel Aviv, Israel for Moty to accept a position at the software company Borland. Three years later the couple opened a wholesale bakery in Sunnyvale, followed by a retail bakery at the same location in Sunnyvale. Just two months ago, the couple’s second  retail location opened in the Pruneyard in Campbell. Each holds the no nonsense name, Sugar, Butter, Flour.
   “My husband is very good with finances, he is the general manager,” says Irit. “He is the brain behind it.”
    As for Irit, she is the artist, the creator of  delicacies, ranging from mango mousse cake, to flourless chocolate raspberry cake to chocolate cranberry torte.
    Sugar, Butter, Flour’s wholesale location provides large quantities of desserts to hotels and  restaurants including Hotel Valencia, Palo Alto Hills Country Club, AP Stumps, the Hyatt Santa Clara and  the Marriot Santa Clara.  The retail shops in Sunnyvale and in the Pruneyard  offer specialty desserts,wedding cakes and traditional pastries such as muffins and croissants.
     The bakeries have been very successful and Irit and Moty hope to open two more retail locations in the future somewhere in the Bay Area.
    Irit says it has been really rewarding to move from  wholesale  to running retail locations.
    “You get to see the people that are buying all the time, and the regular customers,” she said. “In wholesale you don’t really see the people that eat your desserts.”
  Always enamored with baking, Irit worked her way through college at various restaurants. Once she obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Communications and Government, she began a job in her newly earned field only to discover it wasn’t what she really wanted to do.  “After a couple of years working for Channel 2 and Kol Yisrael, (Israel’s radio station), I realized that wasn’t where my passion was,” said Irit.
Coming from a family of academics, Irit said it wasn’t easy to convince herself or her family that a career in baking was a good idea. “It was a little bit scary but I knew I could be good at it and I really liked it, so I kept doing it,” she said.
    Sugar, Butter, Flour bakeries are not kosher but  have many loyal Israeli customers and offer Jewish holiday specialties including flourless desserts for Passover, jelly donuts for Hanukkah and honey cakes for Rosh Hashanah.