Sometimes childhood dreams take awhile to get off the ground. For Andrea Borchers of pastry specialist Brightside Bakeshop, the corporate world provided a long detour after college. The University of Dayton grad had wanted to own a bakery from the time she was little, but first gained experience in marketing and promotions. That included a few years as a project coordinator at Kohl’s Department Stores.

In 2015, she began to brainstorm the idea for a bakery and how she wanted that to look. With a love for morning pastries, but not much knowledge, she began learning from any source she could. Borchers and her husband traversed the US and Europe in search of the best bakeries and pastries. She attended courses at San Francisco Baking Institute and Le Cordon Bleu Paris to get a handle on baking techniques, and that deepened her love of croissants – which would become the main focus of her future bakery.

Brightside started out of a home kitchen in 2016, and Borchers would take sticky buns and cinnamon rolls to a local farmers market. This quickly became popular and one year later, she took the bakery to a full-time pursuit and moved kitchen operations to West Nashville.  A year after quitting a full-time job, Borchers and her husband opened their first retail bakeshop at the Shops at Porter East.

Borchers partially credits her time in the corporate world for preparing her for owning a bakery.

“Working on so many teams and seeing the importance of teamwork, and also utilizing everyone’s specific strengths,” she says. “But you also learn as you go.”

Collaboration is especially important at Brightside. Borchers trusts her team to come up with great ideas and feel confident in implementing them. Employees create the specials on the menu, with each individual getting a sign. This allows them to be creative and get credit for that from the customers.

“If I want to create these things, I want my team to have that creativity too,” she says. “It’s so exciting when you make something, and then you see someone buying that and loving it. They get to hear that in the kitchen. That, to me, is amazing and so fulfilling.”

The croissants are the big sellers, especially the Chocolate Croissant. The Cinnaroll is also quite popular, as are the savory brioche products. Weekend specials bring in many customers, especially from pre-order pickups. During those times, special croissant flavors such as Prosciutto Gruyère and Oatmeal Cream Pie will sell out quickly.

It was always the goal to specialize in pastries, but at one point in time Borchers considered diversifying with breakfast and lunch items. Once she started seeing how much time brioche and croissants took, however, she realized that would spread the bakery too thin and decided to focus on what made the bakery special.

“I feel like doing more sometimes takes away from the creativity and fun,” she says. “I’m here to have fun. I started a bakery to have fun and love what I do. If it’s not what I love anymore, I don’t want to do it. Sometimes it’s all about “expand, expand, expand” and “do more, do more, do more” and you lose sight of the love and passion. That’s why we’re so focused.”

Long hours and production schedules can be demanding – all of the bakery’s pastries are shaped by hand and take three days to make – so that passion keeps the team going. By staying focused on what makes them work, Brightside Bakeshop has been able to open a second location, with one location on each side of Nashville.

This has allowed them to foster community in multiple areas of the city. It’s been foundational to the bakery’s survival, especially during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic when it was necessary. Now during a boom period, Brightside Bakeshop is a source of joy for the people of Nashville and that’s mirrored in the joy Andrea Borchers and her team experiences every day as they do what they love.