Photo courtesy of 100 Mile Bakery 

By: Savanna Puccinelli

Tucked in the outskirts of downtown Springfield, Oregon, 100 Mile Bakery is a sweet, air conditioned escape from a blistering summer day. Stepping into the cafe is reminiscent of a home-style kitchen with a hint of southern comfort. Greeting customers and bustling behind the counter is Leda Hermecz, owner and baker. Pulling back her dark curls into a bun, Hermecz’s contagious smile warms the entire room.

It is not common to find someone like Hermecz, who had a passion for an idea and successfully put it to action. The manifestation of her idea is 100 Mile Bakery, a bakery and café sourced from local ingredients no farther than 100 miles away. Little did she know that her small idea for people to eat food that they grew, was a revolutionary food movement called Farm-to-Table. She thought that Springfield was the perfect place for her bakery. She described this drive to accomplish her goals as, “I realized I absolutely needed to prove that it was possible to run a business only on locally sourced food because it hadn’t been done yet.”

When Hermecz was growing up on her parents’ ten-acre farm in Alabama, she always had access to fresh fruits and vegetables from the garden. She describes her parents as “back to the landers” and they passed down those values to her. In 2001, Hermecz moved to Oregon and started her baking career at Sweet Life Patisserie. Seven years later, she attended the International Slow Food Conference in Torino, Italy and realized that there was people all over the world that shared the same ideas as her. Hermecz sparked with joy as she recalled, “From that moment forward, I dedicated my life to how we source our food, how we grow it, how we transport it, and how we make it into good food.” When she came back to Eugene she unsuccessfully attempted to convince her coworkers to start a bakery and decided to pursue her goal on her own.

Hermecz successfully created a bakery the way she intended but does not plan on stopping at this. Speaking of her bakery as if it was just a project, she says that her ultimate goal is to create an educational space within the food industry for other entrepreneurs like herself. 100 Mile Bakery is just one step to create a more sustainable food industry. Her current struggle is whether or not it is the right time to expand her small business or focus on her future endeavors. Hermecz’s passion goes beyond just reaching her own goals but strives to inspire others within a larger community that spans more than 100 miles.