Samantha "Sammy" Rees is taking Saison, her pandemic-born Brooklyn baking project, off the catering circuit and into a permanent retail space this summer. The business is set to open at 434 Hancock Street in Bed-Stuy - a corner storefront that previously housed a Waffle House - with a soft opening penciled in for early July. Hours will start at Thursday through Sunday before expanding in the fall.
Saison launched during the lockdown years as a weekly box service, dropping off market produce, flowers, and baked goods before shifting toward private catering and gifting work. The move into retail is a significant structural change for any small food business - one that operators across sectors, from specialty grocery to specialty retail categories like dispensary software nevada vendors know well, understand as a jump in fixed costs, staffing demands, and public-facing compliance requirements that a private catering model largely sidesteps. Rees raised roughly $15,875 through a January fundraising campaign to cover renovations and equipment, with Studio NTL - founded by friends Beatrice and Nathan - handling the interior design.
The counter menu reads like a seasonal neighborhood offering: fleur-de-sel chocolate chip cookies, chocolate cherry brownies, rose banana bread, blueberry cornmeal muffins, a stone-fruit frangipane cake, savory sandwiches, and prepared foods. That rotation is expected to track whatever is freshest, consistent with Saison's market-driven approach. Alongside the pastry case, the shop will carry pantry staples and vintage tableware - a curated retail layer that adds SKU variety without requiring a full commercial kitchen to produce.
From Apartment Catering to Public Retail - What Actually Changes
Private catering keeps a food business largely invisible to the licensing and inspection apparatus that governs public retail. A brick-and-mortar changes that entirely. New York City food establishments face health department permitting, certificate-of-occupancy requirements, zoning compliance, and - depending on what's sold - additional labeling or handling rules. The GoFundMe framing around renovation costs and kitchen equipment signals that Rees understood early that the physical buildout would be the first and most capital-intensive hurdle. Community fundraising covered a portion of it; the rest presumably comes from operating reserves or undisclosed financing.
What's striking here is the sequencing. Rees didn't open a storefront first and build an audience second. Saison built its following through catering and gifting work, then used that goodwill - and a crowdfunding page - to finance the physical transition. For small food businesses, that's a more durable path than opening cold into a retail lease. It doesn't eliminate risk, but it enters the lease with demonstrated demand.
The Curated Retail Layer Carries Its Own Logic
Mixing baked goods with pantry staples and vintage tableware isn't just an aesthetic choice - it's a margin strategy. Pastry has high labor input and real spoilage exposure; curated hard goods and non-perishable pantry items carry different cost structures and no expiration pressure. For a small operator running Thursday-through-Sunday hours, that product mix can help smooth revenue across slower service windows. The limited schedule also caps labor cost while the business establishes its retail rhythm - a reasonable approach before committing to a full seven-day week.
The planned expansion into classes and events, noted in the GoFundMe, adds another revenue stream that doesn't depend entirely on foot traffic. Event and class revenue tends to be bookable in advance, which helps cash flow in a way that walk-in pastry sales simply can't guarantee.
Bed-Stuy Timing and the Neighborhood Context
The Hancock Street location puts Saison across from Natty Garden and in a corridor that already draws foot traffic from established neighbors. Timing a soft opening for early July - summer, outdoor-friendly, neighborhood energy high - is practical. The limited Thursday-through-Sunday schedule lets staff and operations find their footing before the fall expansion, which is when a more demanding weekly cadence becomes sustainable. The design collaboration with Studio NTL, presented publicly as part of the community-backed effort, also serves a quiet marketing function: it gives the opening a story before a single cookie crosses the counter.
Vogue has previously covered Rees's work on the home-market editorial side, which gives Saison a media footprint that most neighborhood bakeries don't have at launch. That won't stock the walk-in or train the front-of-house staff - but it doesn't hurt foot traffic on opening day, either.
