Abigail Penney, left, stands ready for customers to purchase some of her freshly baked goods on Sunday, Dec. 18. Penney says she tries to keep the hours to a regular 9 to 5, but according to her, “things happen where you got to make bread and you’re up at 6 a.m. trying to make the bread.”

FARMINGTON — B&B Bakery of Wilton has a new location opening in Downtown Farmington. Located between API and Maine Retirement Annuities, B&B’s new location has a lobby for customers to come in and purchase baked goods such as macarons and cookies.

Currently, B&B Bakery is having a soft opening that started on Dec. 9 at their new location at 127 Broadway in Farmington. The official grand opening is slated for Saturday, Jan. 7, 2023.

“We’ll expand our hours starting in January,” Abigail Penney, owner and operator, stated. “We’re going to be open every weekend, Saturday and Sunday. Probably till about May, and then we’ll see from there.”

B&B stands for bakery and breakfast, Penney explained.

“It’s like B & B [bed-and-breakfast],” she added. “And then we put ‘no sleeps, just eats’, as like a little pun. You’re not going to sleep here, but we have plenty of food and snacks.

“We wanted to do B&B Bakery because eventually we want to move into hot breakfast. Egg sandwiches and things like that,” she added.

Penney wanted to make the location feel homely and open to its customers and hopes to have events hosted at the location.

“I want to keep it like a home-feel, like when you walk in you can sit with your friends or we can do a poetry reading night or an open mic night or something like that,” she said.

Along with running two bakery locations, Penney still maintains her career as a nurse at Franklin Memorial Hospital. During the pandemic, she decided it was time to make a change and try her hand at something that she considered a passion.

“I wanted to continue my nursing career,” she said. “So, I went and enrolled in my bachelor’s program for nursing. I went to the orientation. I was going through all those hoops, and they had an inspirational speaker that came, and he said, ‘Why are you here? Is it your family pushing you forward? Is it your career telling you, you need to be here?’

“And I literally sat there, and I was like, ‘why am I here? Why am I spending the money to do something that I don’t love every day’. I will always be a nurse; I will always do that for a living, and I never want to lose my skills. But I want to do something I love, [so] I dropped out and I enrolled in culinary school, and it’s been magic ever since.”

B&B bakery opened its doors in Wilton in June 2021. Located at 89 Weld Rd., the Wilton location will remain open and continue to operate as it is by only allowing curbside pick-up and no contact delivery. Both locations called for heavy renovations that Penney says were all worth it in the end.

“It was a lot of renovations. It took some time, but we got it up and running really quickly. And from there, it’s been really busy. The commercial kitchen was installed in August 2022. I supply My Dad’s Place in Jay with their desserts, and Uno Mas right here in Farmington.”

Penney also says she supplies Mas Amigos Grill in Sugarloaf with her desserts as well.

Penney was a frontline worker during the pandemic, which she says was a very trying time for her.

“It was absolutely insane during the pandemic, a lot of people getting sick, losing family members to [COVID-19], losing coworkers to [COVID-19]. I’m originally from New York, so I lost a lot of my coworkers to [COVID-19] down there.

“But even here, it hit us hard. And it was just so draining. [FMH] did a great job, but it was just overwhelming for all of us,” she added.

A big influence on Penney’s culinary career was her grandfather, Leo Boyce, who also helped perfect some of her recipes before his passing. “He loved to bake, and he always cooked us our meals for the holidays,” she said. “And then he lived with me for a little while. So, doing all of my baking and taste testing with Papa was really fun. Our little moments.”

For more information on B&B bakery, please contact Penney at 613-774-1752 or visit her website at abikp711.wixsite.com/my-site.