Creating the best gourmet pies you'll ever taste, Special Touch Bakery provides training and employment opportunities to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their non-disabled peers. What makes our pies so special? THE PEOPLE!
Special Touch Bakery has humble beginnings. In the early 1980's, pies and other treats were baked in a small 700 sq. ft. school kitchen, located inside Holy Childhood, as an activity for school program students. Over time, that skills training activity has evolved in a very big way. Special Touch Bakery currently trains and employs 20 people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, who skillfully and lovingly produce more than 17,000 pies each year for local businesses, community organizations and retail customers throughout the greater Rochester area. In addition to making these delicious (and very famous) pies, Special Touch Bakery provides an opportunity for people to learn food production and food service skills while earning a paycheck. This beloved bakery provides the development of lifelong skills for the people who work there. With a vision toward the future, Holy Childhood will move the Special Touch Bakery out of the agency’s school kitchen to a brand new, state of the art, 20,000 sq. ft. facility located at 1999 Mt. Read Blvd. in Rochester, NY. This move will create up to 40 additional positions, in an integrated, competitive, work environment where people with disabilities will work side-by-side with non-disabled co-workers. This new facility will also allow Special Touch Bakery to substantially increase pie production. Palmer Food Services is the bakery’s distribution partner in this new venture, which will enable Special Touch Bakery to expand regionally and eventually nationwide. The new Special Touch Bakery is scheduled to open October 2017.
