Sweeney’s Bakery—a beloved mom-and-pop shop in Brandywine Hundred— closed its doors after a 60 year run last weekend.
When Sweeney’s Bakery announced last month on social media that it wouldn’t be renewing its lease in June, there was an outpouring of nostalgia from the community.
Kelly Eichholz says Sweeney’s was not just an community institution—it was a family tradition.
“So many of our family memories were tied with a Sweeney’s cake, or their cookies,” she said. “They always made you feel special and welcomed at Sweeney’s.”
Alisa Wiggins said Sweeney’s was part of how she marked life’s milestones.
“My very first birthday in Delaware, which maybe I would have been seven, I believe was a Sweeney’s cake … My bridal shower was a Sweeney’s cake, my baby shower was a Sweeney’s cake,” Wiggins said. “I have a friend whose husband wrote a song on his guitar because he loved it so much.”
And Ella Kelly doesn’t know where she’ll get her baked goods in Delaware now.
“If you went to a different bakery, you wouldn’t get the same stuff. It’s just his recipes. The way he made ‘em,” she said.
James Sweeney III says the relationships he, his father, and the other employees built with customers were the foundation of the business’ success.
“My playpen was up here. So we’re at the point where people have watched me grow up,” he said. “They think that they can tell me things, and they still think I’m that teenager that they can tell ... People have been very, very generous with their thoughts. They’re so happy for me, they’re so sad for themselves. I frankly haven’t read any of the Facebook stuff because it exhausts me. I’m exhausted, and emotionally I couldn’t handle it at this point.”
He said he plans to respond to customers’ heartfelt comments when he gets the chance.
“I’ve had people send me emails, I’ve had people send me cards, I’ve had people come in, they want to hug me, they want a selfie. You know, I’m part of their lives,” he said. “I’m part of their Christmas and New Years and weddings and baptisms and birthdays, cause I’ve been there. ”
Sweeney says the bakery’s other key to success was sticking to high quality ingredients.
He says that if he switched brands of chocolate chips, for example, customers would notice—and tell him they preferred the original ones.
He says sometimes it was hard to keep crowd favorites stocked through breakfast time.
“These cream donuts. I don’t know what people are—it’s like a drug to these people. I swear. This lady just called me yesterday and she said, 'Could I get eight dozen of them?' I was like, 'What are you doing with eight dozen cream donuts?' ... I just thought, holy cabooses!”
But the first few years of business were more of an uphill battle.
James Sweeney Jr. started baking in the navy, then worked for a German baker in Media, PA.
“[The baker] gave my dad all the recipes and told him to go to Delaware because there’s nothing here but horse farms, and there was nothing around here. And we’re still using the same recipes. Everyone thinks we’re an Irish bakery, but they’re all German recipes,” he said.
Sweeney says his parents worked long hours to keep the bakery going.
“There was nothing around here, no supermarkets, there was nothing. So it was tough, it was a very tough two or three years. But then finally it caught on. And my dad was really charming, he was really easy to talk to. And people liked to stop in and just talk to him and stuff like that. They would come to the back door and say, hey Jimmy, how you doin’ ... and he would say, come in have a donut, have a cup of coffee. So he was building relationships back then,” he said.
Sweeney says during the first few years of operation, his parents employed some of their relatives.
“They kind of were just flying by the seat of their pants. There was no business plan or master scheme about anything. It was just basically to provide for a family. And It was very fortunate because we’ve all lived off it for the last sixty years,” he said.
But the business hit a rough patch in 1998, when the ACME next door expanded, and forced the bakery to relocate to the other side of the shopping center.
James Sweeney III had taken over the business from his father at that point, and the move meant a bigger space, higher rent, and costs of moving the huge ovens and mixers.
At the same time, road work on Naamans made it hard for customers to get to the bakery.
“We were behind on our rent, and we were being evicted,” he said.
Then, the community stepped in.
“In like three or four weeks time, people just gave me money to pay my back rent,” he said. “Hundreds, twenties, people were writing me checks for $500.”
He attributes this to the fact that his father had made a point of giving to the community early on.
“When people needed things when he first started out, we would donate to the churches around us, the high schools, the bake sales, we always donated. So when we were in that low place, that’s when people really came back. The karma, it was just—it was just very rewarding. And you just realize, holy cow, we are part of this community.”
Sweeney says these connections were what kept his father, James Sweeney Jr., going until he passed away in 2009.
“It made his life longer, because it gave him a purpose. So I’ll always be grateful that he was able to hang on. He had cancer, but he fought it for 20 years, and he worked up until two weeks before he died. I’ll never regret keeping the bakery open, working as hard as I could so that he would have a place to go and have a purpose … Something that he created.”
Although Sweeney says the bakery was going strong financially, when it came time to sign a lease for the next several years, he started to envision a different future for himself.
As a few longtime employees have passed away, Sweeney says he’s taken on their hours. His work days start at 1am. He'll take a nap sometime during the day, and finish work around 6pm.
“I don’t want to be that 84-year-old guy that’s limping and barely walking and still working at this place,” he said. “You know, I kind of want to do something else.”
But keeping up with increased attention and demand during the bakery’s last month hasn’t given him much time to consider what he wants to do next.
“I kind of thought, well I’ll just decide if I want to go back to pastry school and learn new techniques, or do I want to go to bartending school and be a bartender,” he said. “I’m young enough to do whatever I want really, I’m just worn out from this job right now.”
Many longtime customers have expressed on Facebook interest in a recipe book.
Sweeney says he’s considering writing a memoir with recipes in it, but will need time to convert his bakery-scale recipes to home kitchen proportions
