Photo by Paul Nordmann
Mr. Meowski's owner, Tim Nordmann
When Timothy Nordmann began baking bread as a passion project, he didn’t have a storefront, a commissary, or a professional kitchen. He didn’t even have any customers except for his wife, with whom he used to joke about a fictional bakery that he was going to open one day. Inspired by their cat’s nickname, Mr. Meowski, he knew the moniker was silly but so was the idea of starting a bread-making operation of his own—or at least so he thought.
Now, five years later, Nordmann’s idea has morphed into the wildly successful Mr. Meowski’s Sourdough, a bread and baked goods shop that has gained a loyal following in its St. Charles neighborhood, area farmers' markets, restaurants, and local grocers. The bakery has grown so popular, Nordman is preparing to open a larger location at 107 N. Main in St. Charles. It will serve the pastries and breads that Mr. Meowski's is known for, as well as pizza—a new addition to the repertoire.
Nordmann plans to operate his current location, at 3315 MO-94 N, for about one more week and then to close that location's doors for good. He then anticipates the new space will open about two to three weeks later, though he's still finalizing an opening date. (For updates on the opening, follow Mr. Meowski's on Facebook.)
“We moved from a commissary kitchen to our own place in St. Charles before the beginning of the second farmers' market season,” Nordmann says. “It was this little 800-square-foot place where we built out our kitchen from scratch, then opened for retail a year later.
"We’ve been doing retail for three full years now, and we have just totally run out of room. I think small kitchens are amazing—you see a lot of great food coming out of small kitchens—but the bakery business is different, because there is no way for me to run a good bakery out of a small kitchen," he continues. "The amount of equipment and space that people require to work is different. Once we realized that we needed more room, we started looking in earnest for a place. How we ended up on Main Street was kind of serendipitous.”
As Nordmann explains, the search for a new location began last February. After finding a spot that he liked on Main Street, Nordmann reached out to the realty company—only to discover that it was unavailable. Determined to find something, Nordmann kept scouring the area and putting out letters of intent. Nothing worked, and he was about to give up when he got a call from that original realty company, telling him that it had the perfect location for his bakery. Everything came together around the first of the year, and it’s been under construction since. Nordmann is eager to make the new storefront into the new Mr.Meowski’s.
In addition to the buildout of the physical space, Nordmann has been hard at work developing his pizza recipe, which will be available at the new location about once per week as a special. Utilizing his garlic olive oil–brushed sourdough for the crust, Nordmann’s pies will be topped with simple ingredients, such as a classic Margherita that uses fresh mozzarella cheese, San Marzano tomatoes, fresh basil, extra virgin olive oil, and sea salt. As part of the development process, he’s been doing pizza pop-ups out of his current spot, and the response has been encouraging.
“I’m not trying to conquer the world here with pizza,” Nordmann says. “This is just a once-a-week thing, and we are trying to make it to the best of all our abilities. Working with two other pastry chefs has been extremely helpful, because they are so knowledgeable.”
Now that he's on the cusp of this new chapter, Nordmann can’t help but reflect on how he got here. A videographer by trade, Nordmann spent 13 years filming weddings, only to find himself burned out. He decided to leave the business and do some soul-searching, attending St. Charles Community College as he tried to figure out his next move. At the time, he also became interested in sourdough bread as a hobby, and his obsession with getting it right began to reanimate his spirit.
“I had an hour every morning to myself before I had to drive to class, and that’s when I started my breadmaking adventure—but I could not get it right,” Nordmann says. “I have this weird default problem that when I am trying to work on something, I can’t let go until I get it. It’s like I’m trying to solve a puzzle that I couldn’t get right, but I kept at it and kept at it. The side product of that was a lot of bread.”
Though Nordmann’s original plan was to have fresh bread for he and his wife, his obsession with making the perfect loaf left them overwhelmed with sourdough. He began giving his extras to neighbors and friends, and he started posting photos on Facebook that showed off his wares. People would reply by asking when he was going to start delivering and, on a whim, he took them up on the offer.
“One day, I responded, ‘How about today?” Nordmann says. “That’s how it all started—really innocently. Then every step forward in growth kind of complicated everything.”
Nordmann’s first big break into the bread business came courtesy of Local Harvest Grocery. After he tried to sell his bread wholesale around town, the Tower Grove South grocer not only agreed to sell Nordmann’s sourdough but also connected him with the Tower Grove Farmers' Market. From that moment on, he’s never looked back.
“I think when you rediscover that you might be good at something, that feeling is really exciting. And when other people are responding, it really keeps you going and gives you a daily purpose,” Nordmann says. “I really love this. This is one of those jobs that you are never going to reach your goal and bake the perfect loaf. It’s elusive, but I try to do a good job every day to get toward where I want to go.”