New Bakery Sweetens Up Walker Road

There's a new business sweetening up the Ernest Building with cookies, cupcakes, pastries and pies, all on the cheap.

opened on Saturday in a modestly-sized storefront at 33682 Walker Rd., with bright lavender carpet and candy-colored stripes on the wall.

"It reminds me of sugar and candies and sweet things," said owner Gayle Kovach of Sheffield Lake.

And you'll find exactly that - cookies, snow balls, oreos dipped in fudge and hand decorated, gourmet cucpackes, regular cupcakes, whole pecan pie - the store even offers kids a chance to decorate cupcakes on Thursdays from 4-6 p.m., for just the price of the cupcake.

Kovach, 50, said all of the recipes - individual baked goods range in price from 50 cents to $1.85 - are either her's or her family's.

"Some of them are so old that the paper is worn down," Kovach said. "So we covered them with plastic and put them in a book, so we could flip through and not tear them up."

Kovach, who learned to bake from her mother and grandmother, has enlisted the help of her daughter, Tiffany Black, 35.

"We've been baking in here all morning like crazy," Black said Saturday.

And it was Kovach's family who first made her realize she had a talent for baking.

"I was always that go-to person where everybody would say 'Hey, can you bake this for so and so,'" she said. "And, of course, you don't get paid for that stuff."

Three months ago, she decided to open The Sweet Shoppe, and on Saturday, she finally unlocked the door with cupcakes for sale, and people were waiting in the parking lot.

"We've been waiting for this all week," first customer Amy Garafolo said as she and her husband Steve walked through the door.

Kovach may be a rookie in the professional baking circuit, but she is no stranger to the business world.

In 1994, she owned Clean Sweep, a cleaning company in Sheffield Lake, and Great Lakes Driving School in Avon Lake.

At The Sweet Shoppe, Kovach still has to consider traffic, but in a different way.

"The traffic here is great, and of course who wouldn't want the traffic from ?" she said.

The Sweet Shoppe is open Monday and Wednesday-Saturday, from 11 a.m. - 7 p.m. Its phone number is 440-930-2616.