Mr. Meowski’s Sourdough has moved to a new location in St. Charles

Mr. Meowski’s Sourdough is now in the hustle and bustle of Main Street in St. Charles. The bakery, which had been in a suburban area of St. Charles since it opened in 2018, opened its new location at 107 N. Main St. last month, as reported by the Riverfront Times.

“We couldn't turn around without bumping into each other at the old place,” said owner Timothy Nordmann. “Now, with the larger space, it gives us the opportunity to do different things and, of course, do more volume.” According to Nordmann, it was challenging to design the space to be used consciously. “I had to design the place to work now with Covid, and in three or four years when Covid’s hopefully a thing of the past,'' Nordmann said. “In this new place, I really had a chance to work on building the environment to how I really wanted the customer experience to be.”

The experience Mr. Meowski’s aims to bring is the nostalgic feeling of Saturday mornings as a child. Even the Mr. Meowski character used on their website and social media posts were created to add to the whimsical atmosphere of the bakery. “It’s supposed to be an escape from reality when you walk through this door,” Nordmann said. “When you walk in, you see this blue bright pastry case, you see all the bakers working … there's also an antique TV that I like to play Saturday morning cartoons [on].”

For Nordmann, bread-making started as a hobby after switching careers in 2015. After uploading photos to Facebook and gaining interest from friends about buying the bread, Nordmann turned his hobby into a small business. “I just wanted to keep pursuing trying to bake a good loaf of bread and couldn’t get it right, so the side effect was a lot of bread,” Nordmann said.

Because of the lengthy process it takes to make several menu items, Mr. Meowski’s is only open on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The sourdough bread dough takes a full day of fermentation before baking, and croissant products take three days to prepare and bake. “We have to start prepping a croissant on Tuesday to sell it on a Friday,” Nordmann said. “All that prep work is happening during the week so we can be open on Friday.” Aside from a regular croissant, customers can try a variety of croissant products including chocolate-filled and ham- and cheese-filled croissants. Other menu items including the cinnamon rolls and sticky buns are also made using croissant dough. Seasonal danishes in sweet and savory varieties will also be available. 

When they get really grounded, they’ll look into restarting pizza nights on Wednesday nights. “We did really simple pizzas using our sourdough – we did a margherita and a pepperoni,” Nordmann said.

Due to Covid-19 restrictions, Mr. Meowski’s is operating with takeout service only. The only seating currently available is two church pews for customers to use when waiting on an order. “As the situation changes we’re going to remove those church pews and bring back the original idea which was four small bistro-type tables,” Nordmann said. “Then, people can eat their pastry with a great cup of coffee and enjoy their Saturday morning inside the bakery.”