Nestled into a nook of the Mahonia Building, Elephant Baking Co. bustles with signs of production: hustling people, oven smells, clangs of cooling trays, faint music, coffee. The decor of the discrete storefront and cafe is simple and satisfying in the way that clarity brings comfort. Everything available in the pastry case and display freezer is 100% free of gluten. This includes scones, cookies, pies, ice cream, dinner rolls, sliced bread, and a whole range of items that are delicious and also safe for the gluten intolerant and allergic community.
For Jessie Scarola, owner and operator of Elegant Elephant for more than 12 years, gluten is dangerous. Scarola lives with celiac disease, an autoimmune condition that causes severe inflammation in the digestive system. Scarola found herself at a culinary crossroads shortly after her diagnosis in 2005.
“This was what really forced me into the kitchen,” says Scarola. “This was 20 years ago, before gluten-free had become mainstream and a part of the public consciousness like it is today.” She struggled to find gluten-free ingredients, let alone ready-made products, in San Diego. By the time Scarola moved back to her hometown of Eugene in 2008, she had already begun sourcing and producing gluten-free baked goods, tinkering with recipes, and experimenting with flour blends because so few pre-made flours were readily available.
“The demand for GF just wasn’t there yet,” Scarola says, which was ultimately a catalyst for her. During her first pregnancy, while meeting friends for coffee dates, she would often bring her own treats, beginning with “Not Your Average Cookie,” made with toffee, peanut butter, and chocolate chips. She casually offered one to a cafe owner in 2012, and they bit. With that first order, Elegant Elephant came into being.
Fortunately for Scarola, the newly established commissary kitchen owned by Hummingbird Wholesale was just coming online. As one of the first tenants, and encouraged by then-owner Charlie Tilt, she developed a business plan, hit her two-week timeline on delivery, and started baking every week. Initially, she put out small batches of 50 to 100 scones, brownies, and cookies, but a fortuitous pre-holiday meeting with the head of baking at Market of Choice on Willamette Street set Elegant Elephant on a steep growth trajectory, supplying, almost overnight, gluten-free dinner rolls and pies to several locations.
“That first holiday season was huge,” says Scarola. “We didn’t know what we were capable of, but it demonstrated that there was a great need and interest in GF products in this community and around the state.”
After sorting out the packaging, labeling, and marketing at a rapid pace, Elegant Elephant soon became an anchor-tenant in the commissary kitchen as well as a steady vendor for Market of Choice. All of that allowed the business to grow and thrive for several years, until, as Scarola says, “the pandemic changed everything,” not only with sales, but also with supply chain issues limiting the availability of their gluten-free ingredients.
“We had developed seven specific GF flour blends depending on the product,” some of which are also vegan or nut-free, she explains, “and not having those available readily meant we had to shift some of what we were doing.”
Pivoting toward an occasional home-delivery model and sharing distribution with other vendors around the state allowed Elegant Elephant to maintain a customer base and continue growing over the past few years. Eventually, the bakery moved into a more permanent space and expanded toward a co-packing model, where the space and staff is shared with other values-aligned businesses and organizations.
By operating an exclusively gluten-free zone, Elegant Elephant has been able to partner with, and produce for, Larry & Sons Bagels and Vanilla Jill’s Ice Creamery, both of which are available at the cafe storefront. In addition, 86 Hunger, a Eugene-based nonprofit dedicated to combating food insecurity, uses the kitchen for meal production to distribute to members of our unhoused community.
“We have a spectacular staff,” says Scarola. The company has grown from one to five to 32 employees who consistently provide and deliver high-quality gluten-free baked goods, as they have for years, with plenty of opportunity going into the future. Find Elegant Elephant products at a variety of retail locations, as well as the Lane County Farmers Market on Saturdays. They are available for catering and events and offer storefront retail six days a week (closed Sundays) at their bakery location.
Elegant Elephant Baking Co.
120 Shelton McMurphy Blvd., Suite 150
