Award-Winning Bakery Reopens the Cafe at Cheese Importers

For over a decade, Moxie Bread Co. has been a leader in the local bakery scene. Now, it has a new location inside one of Longmont’s longstanding businesses.

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of our favorite reason to drive to Longmont: Cheese Importers, founded by Lyman and Linda White when they started selling cheese from a VW pickup bus in 1976. The business moved into its current home at 103 Main Street in 2012 and is now run by the late Lyman and Lydia’s children, including daughter Clara White. “They were also the first to bring Brie to Colorado,” she told Westword in 2023. “My parents were always incredibly progressive.”

Cheese Importers is more than a cheese shop; it’s a community hub filled with treasures of all kinds for those who love food — along with a massive cheese cave packed with hundreds of options. Even if you’ve never visited, you’ve likely eaten cheese from this shop, as it’s also a wholesaler to many of the region’s top restaurants. But its former bistro shut down when the pandemic hit in 2020 and the space has been used for storage ever since.

Moxie Bread is more than a bakery. Founded by Andy Clark and his wife, Phillippa, in Louisville in 2015, it’s a beloved business that has continued to grow and evolve over the years. In 2020, it expanded to north Boulder with a second shop and a mill. “The underlying mission of Moxie is really to educate people about heirloom grain and organic and get more of it out to the world, so that people know and understand what it is and value it — then there are more farmers able to grow it because there’s a market for it as more home bakers use it,” explains Phillipa.

That mission was a driving passion for her husband, Andy, who was a fixture of the local food movement in Colorado. Along with founding Moxie, he was the chairman of the Colorado Grain Chain and a mentor for many. In 2022, a year after the business added a third location in Lyons, Andy Clark tragically passed away, but Phillipa and the couple’s three sons have continued to honor his legacy.

A natural partnership

“I wasn’t looking to expand retail-wise in particular,” Phillipa says, but the opportunity to reopen the former bistro at Cheese Importers as a Moxie Bread Co. cafe happened naturally. John Parkinson, the current head of production for Moxie, was the pastry chef for Cheese Importers before the bistro closed. He was the one who shared the idea with Phillipa, who met with the shop’s owners and “just had a really good instant feel about doing business with them,” she recalls. “They are just kind-hearted, good people. It’s a family-owned business, and it felt like a good fit.”

Plus, she adds, “I love the space like everyone else. I’d been there and had just really, really happy and warm memories of being in that space myself. So for me, for them to ask us felt like an honor.”

The cafe opened on December 15, though at the time, Cheese Importers was using the seating area for its Christmas merchandise, so Moxie focused on takeout. Last week, that area was cleaned out, making space for indoor seating along with the outdoor seating area in front of the shop.

What’s on the menu

“We’re still figuring out what the customer needs are and what people are asking for,” says Phillipa. Right now, the menu includes “the kind of classic things that we know we do well,” such as pastries, sourdough bread, sandwiches, salads, picnic-style sides and “really good coffee,” including lattes, Americanos, cappuccinos and more.

The plan is to continue to expand the offerings — hot sandwiches were recently added, for example. “The menu will grow and change,” Phillipa says, “but the main thing is that people can know they can get bread — fresh bread, and fresh pastries,” including classics like butter or chocolate croissants and kougin amans, along with other creative flavors from the company’s new head of pastry, Harra Conticelli.

“She is phenomenal,” Phillipa says. “Harra is coming up with just the most innovative, interesting pastries. And this is the area that I’m most excited about focusing on, rather than expansion. I have zero interest, really, in opening more and more locations. I just want to make the ones we have exceptional.”

Her current obsession, created by Conticelli, is a Danish with hazelnut paste and a compote made with cranberries and cherries. “It’s sweet, but it retains this slight sharpness to it. And then it has this beautiful housemade crumble on top, which has a crunch. So it has all these different textures and these different flavors that just come together so well,” Phillipa shares.

The new Longmont cafe also has the bonus of being close to the production facility that Moxie opened in the town about a year ago.

Longmont for the long haul

“We’d kind of maxed out of the space that we were in,” says Phillipa of the circa 1898 building in Louisville where Moxie got its start. “Bakers were literally, like, shoulder to shoulder, shaping loaves. It was tiny. It was fun, but too squashed. I knew at some point I had to expand and get a bigger space. … It was a leap that I was nervous about doing, because my dream is not to take over the world and have a massive company by any means. I just got to a stage where I had to do it if I wanted to make enough bread for the existing customers.”

With the addition of the Longmont production facility, Phillipa was able to consolidate all her teams and bring everyone to one location where pastry, bread and prepared take-home food such as lasagnas, meatballs and salads are all made.

Soon — possibly as soon as next week — Moxie will also move its mill to Longmont. “For us to be able to mill more and to get that fresh flour out to the world is a really exciting future for us,” Phillipa says.

Last year, Moxie had a stand at the Longmont Farmers Market, “which was great for us because it gave us the chance to get in front of a lot of Longmont people to introduce them to our products and start making relationships,” she notes. With the cafe, those same customers can now enjoy Moxie’s baked goods year-round.

The company has received a warm welcome in Longmont. “It’s been amazing,” Phillipa says. At the cafe, “people are just so excited that the space is open,” while many others are happy to have a Moxie location closer to home.

Recently, Phillipa attended a meeting with other downtown Longmont businesses, “just to plug in, hear info and connect” with the community,” she notes. Cheese Importers co-owner Clara White was also there, and when she shared the news about Moxie reopening the cafe, “everyone broke out in a round of applause. … I’m still kind of surprised that anyone knows who we are,” Phillipa jokes. “People actually know us and are excited about it — that kind of warm welcome is what we’ve felt.”

While Moxie isn’t planning to open any more locations, Phillipa is excited about its future. “We have settled in” at the Longmont production facility, she notes, “and things are going great. … It’s an awesome spot, and it’s good for cross-training people.” Now, the staff can “expand their skills in different areas, and help each other out, and be a more cohesive team. So all those things have been really, really positive for us.”

Last year, Phillipa and her sons celebrated a decade of Moxie with a party in the backyard area of the original location in Louisville. It was a joyous occasion, and we hope to continue celebrating Moxie, and Cheese Importers, for a very long time to come.

Moxie Bread Co. at Cheese Importers is located at 103 Main Street in Longmont and is open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday. For more information, visit moxiebreadco.com.

Cheese Importers is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. For more information, visit cheeseimporters.com.