Pastelitos, papas rellenas, Cuban bread and croquetas: Ormond Beach now has a Cuban bakery.
Mimi’s Cuban Bakery, located at 1220 Hand Ave., opened on Monday Aug. 24. Owned by Sergio Hevia and Tammy Bowen, the bakery offers fresh handmade pastries, desserts, sandwiches and coffee.
Since opening, the community has shown up to support their new business, the couple said.
“It has been completely overwhelming,” Hevia said. “We have sold out every day.”
Owning a bakery is a new venture for Hevia and Bowen, who left careers in property maintenance and management in affordable housing to pursue their own business. The couple moved from Miami to Ormond Beach eight years ago and quickly noticed the lack of authentic Cuban food in the area.
“In Miami, there’s a bakery every 10 yards, and they’re open all the time,” Hevia said. “Here, we couldn’t find anything that was real. It’s either machine-made, or frozen, or brought in from somewhere else.”
So they decided to try their hand at selling the kind of food they loved.
Mimi’s Cuban Bakery offers fresh handmade pastries, desserts, sandwiches and coffee. Courtesy photo
They started by selling Cuban pastries at the farmer’s markets in Flagler Beach and Port Orange. After less than four months of consistently selling out of pastries quickly, they chose to look for a brick-and-mortar location.
“Everybody would ask us, “Where’s your shop? Where’s your shop?'” Hevia said. “So we decided, ‘Let’s just open a shop.'”
Hevia and Bowen balanced their full-time jobs, the farmers’ markets and the buildout of their bakery this summer. They officially quit their jobs the Friday before opening.
“It started out as our hobby and passion to perfect the pastries, and when they finally were where you would take one bite, and it was like, ‘Yeah, that tastes like home,'” Hevia said. “Until each and every pastry was like that, we didn’t go to the markets, and when we took them to the markets, it was the same reaction from the first day.”
Among their baked offerings are the guava and cheese pastry, potato balls stuffed with beef (papas rellenas), and their signature Cuban sandwich pastry, which contains the fixings of the traditional sandwich, but in a pastry form and served on a bed of potato sticks.
Hevia and Bowen tell customers to come in early, as pastries are selling quickly.
For Bowen, the baker between the two, seeing the positive reactions from customers makes her smile.
Sergio Hevia and Tammy Bowen show off their signature Cuban sandwich pastry. Photo by Jarleene Almenas
“It makes me extremely happy that they’re enjoying what I make, and just hearing them say it makes it worth it,” Bowen said.
They also hope their bakery becomes a place for locals to socialize — somewhere they can grab a coffee and a pastry and perhaps play a few games of dominoes; they built a room just for that.
“The two things I miss about Miami the most is the food and the camaraderie,” Hevia said.
In 1956, his father immigrated from Cuba to Miami, where he opened a restaurant. Hevia grew up in that restaurant, he said.
“I saw all the good times and the bad times in the restaurant, and he inspired me,” Hevia said. “… The kitchen in the Latin household is the nucleus. Everybody’s in the kitchen.”
Mimi’s Cuban Bakery is open Thursday to Monday, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sundays from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. The bakery is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Dining and Cooking