We Found The Ultimate Valentine's Day Gift For Bacon Lovers
Jump right to photos of our bakery tour and taste test >>
"For a couple of months, I would bring my creations into work once a week," said Klein, a former Best Buy manager. "Some stuff worked, some stuff didn't, but [my coworkers] loved it. Baconery took off from there."
Since his first makeshift test kitchen experiments, the menu at the Baconery on New York's Upper West Side hasn't changed very much. Most of the core items that Klein first baked for coworkers in 2011 are still on the menu, like those chocolate chip bacon cookies and the beloved thick-cut bacon dipped in high-quality chocolate.
That hasn't stopped the menu from expanding into seasonal and monthly specials though, including the latest Valentine's Day treats like marshmallow hearts with bacon sprinkles, red velvet bacon cake balls, and chocolate-covered bacon with "naughty" phrases.
But it's not all sweets and pastries at Baconery. On Saturdays, Klein and his team are already planning to expand their Saturday bacon mac and cheese nights to an all-weekend affair, and their monthly caramel apple bacon doughnuts to a weekend morning pick-me-up.
"Our fan base has definitely grown. We get a lot of regular local and international press, and of course we have our repeat customers," Klein explains.
All that press — from features on the Travel Channel to The New York Times — has definitely paid off. This weekend alone, the Baconery staff will be working non-stop to fill more than 100 orders for Valentine's Day. The company also has plans to build a worldwide franchise on their salty-sweet products and hopes to become a recognized brand on store shelves with bacon ice cream and bacon cookies.
So with all this hype and Valentine's Day just around the corner, we had to see the specialty bacon bakery for ourselves. And after visiting with Wesley Klein and trying all his bacon sweets, we have to agree with him: "Life is just better with bacon."