Save Heaven Gluten Free Bakery from shutting down

Volodymyr Lahoda is organizing this fundraiser.

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Hi and thank you for your time to read these lines!

We are Polina and Vlad (Volodymyr) and after immigrating from Ukraine in 2022 we started a new life and a gluten-free bakery producing healthy celiac safe gluten-free sourdough breads in Minneapolis, MN and at this critical time we will not be able to continue serving local community without your support.

We are in a challenging part of starting a new business. To grow we needed to have a dedicated kitchen with higher costs and are looking for help to cover these costs in the short till we are able to grow into enough locations. We are currently in 4 locations are adding 2 more in 2 weeks and have plans to add many more over the next month. These funds will help us keep operating through this time.

Below: Heaven Gluten Free Breads at Eastside Coop in Northeast Minneapolis.

Long before we could dream about baking healthy GF bread, in our past lives, we lived in Kiev, Ukraine, and were working in IT (me) and aromatherapy (Polina), and few days before our reality has changed forever, we enjoyed a walk in a park on a sunny February weekend of 2022.

We landed in Minnesota in OCT 2022 and after months of being on the road our cat Mira was finally happy to be in a place, she could call home. Here is a proof of how she was eager to get her paws to Minnesota:

Why Minnesota, of all places, you would ask? The answer is friendship that has started over 20 years ago, in a small town of Mankivka, Ukraine, where a Peace Corp Volunteer named Emily Awaijane (Kanz back then) was teaching English at my school for over two years and opened a new world for me, called Америка (America).

Below: Mankivka, Cherkassy region, 2003.

Below: St. Louis Park, Minnesota, 2022

Below: Coming back home from grocery shopping at Aldi few weeks after landing in MN.

Fast forward to OCT, 2022, Polina, myself, Mira and our three suitcases landed in Minneapolis and got our first jobs in St. Louis Park and, gradually started to get back to normality. We were struggling with finding fresh GF bread and Polina got back to baking bread at home, just as she used to do in Kyiv.

Below: Polina's Homemade Bread

The idea of baking bread started brewing in our heads, and as we shared home baked loaves with our GF friends, we immediately got positive feedback and orders for more. Summer 2023, we decided to pitch the bread to the owners of Hold the Wheat GF Bakery in St.Louis Park - Spencer Justiniano and Ed Snyder, just to see if we could produce for the bakery. They tried samples and loved the bread.

To our surprise, the owners insisted that we started our own brand, use their kitchen in the after-hours to bake the bread, and sell on our own during the day to get started. We LOVED the idea, applied for cottage food license, and with few sleepless nights, number of tests runs in the oven and racing hearts we announced first sales to launch on a hot August Saturday. Our jaws dropped when 40 loaves were sold out in under 90 minutes after the sales started at 8:00 AM that Saturday... and there it began...

We both had full time jobs during the day (Polina started helping at Hold The Wheat bakery and I worked for IT service company), baked during the night, packed the bread super early morning, and sold the bread at the bakery during Friday and the weekends leaving time for only few hours of sleep. After two months we decided to pivot, leave our jobs, and dedicated ourselves to perfecting the loaves (which they desperately needed):

Below: Some of the first batches produced

The demand grew, and we started thinking about our own kitchen and offering bread to more people through retailers. It made sense, our capacity was limited, the demand grew and we have never done anything with more passion than crafting a sourdough loaf. So, we started looking for a place in October 2023, and our options narrowed down pretty soon to one location that was small but had everything we needed to provide celiac safe bread and it was expensive. We found a way to finance equipment, we made a business plan and signed our lease.

In the meantime, Polina's health deteriorated as sleepless nights started catching up with us, but ahead of holiday season we kept on pushing. Christmas week kept us on our feet and without any sleep for 3 days... and that's when Polina's thyroid decided to completely shut down sending her into 3 weeks break from baking. We were not aware of what was going on until blood tests showed that her organs were on the brink of failing. Very gradually, after starting hormone replacement therapy, she started getting back to normal. Phew.... We kept on going.

January 2024, we were supposed to move into our kitchen and get our commercial license, but utilities at the facility could not support our needs and it came out of the blue along with expensive invoices and delays.

Below: In front of our bread oven at the kitchen after it was delivered.

February 2024, we moved in, passed inspections, and got our commercial license!!!! We could not believe ourselves when we made our first batch at the new kitchen!!!! However, there were difficulties with adjusting to new equipment that affected production quality for almost a month.

As soon as we fixed all issues, we started adding on new partnerships like Eastside Coop, Brim restaurant to name a few. But the product was new, people did not know it... Our volumes started growing very gradually. And to continue to grow we need to dedicate more time to marketing efforts.

Below: First batches produced at the new Kitchen

Below: Our kitchen

We wanted more people to be able to afford the bread, so we negotiated better pricing with our suppliers, committing to larger volumes, slashed our margin and cut retail prices by 30%....to only see the sales gradually grow and not generate enough revenue to cover our expenses.

Ever since we moved in our new kitchen, we haven't been profitable. Dedicating 12-14 hours to produce fresh sourdough that is nurturing to body and soul. Sourdough bread goes through natural fermentation process and helps variety cultures thrive in our microbiome, contributing to stronger immune system and delivering more nutrients that are absorbed more easily by the body vs yeast bread that populates microbiome with monocultures that suppress immune system. We put our customers best interest ahead of everything and we are not ready to work with cheaper, less healthy ingredients. We don't use any preservatives, so our bread lasts on average 2-3 days on the counter, 6-7 days in the fridge and freezes excellent.

Within a month time we will launch additional locations here in Twin Cities and Minnesota, but right now we can't continue to operate, as all money that we make from sales are spent on ingredients, deliveries, utilities leaving nothing for the rent or salaries for Polina, or myself.

Below: Heaven at Brim Restaurant

We are asking you to share this page, follow and like our instagram , Facebook , place order on our website or buy a gift card that can be used in the future. We offer nationwide 2-day shipping and local delivery with 20 mile range from downtown Minneapolis. I promise, our loaves now look much better than at the beginning.

Tell your friends about Heaven GF Bread if you haven't done so. Let your local store know that they should carry our product. If you have any contacts in the media field, tell them about our story, maybe they will be interested to share it with the public, donate or send us a message of support.