Business is Blooming

On a late-summer Thursday, Alexandra (Beaudoin) Pilon ’13 (CLAS) and Monica Beaudoin, owners of Pratt Street’s Bloom Bake Shop, are preparing floral centerpieces, coffee, and desserts for a gala benefiting the same Hartford nonprofit that ran the community gardens where Pilon grew flowers more than a decade ago.

“It’s full circle,” says Pilon, who left her government relations career in 2021 to join the business her baker sister had started the year prior. “People often are confused by my pivot, but in my mind, I really do a similar job. I advocate for Bloom Bake Shop, for Pratt Street, for our city.”

A centerpiece of the brick-paved pedestrian thoroughfare since opening in 2022, Bloom’s temptations include cinnamon coffee cake and raspberry lemon scones, a blueberry latte with house-made syrup, locally sourced gifts from caps and shirts to pickles and jams, and Pilon’s bailiwick: florals. Bouquets are everywhere, from dried arrangements for sale to sunflowers, sweet pea, cosmos, and more awaiting tonight’s event. Pilon and Beaudoin helped launch the nonprofit Pratt Street Merchants Association to promote and champion the historic street, which frequently hosts street markets, salsa dancing nights, and seasonal events like the late summer Pratt Street Yacht Club Coastal Cookout and October’s Great Pratt Street Autumn Festival.

While the neighborhood gatherings are special, Bloom itself has become part of its customers’ everyday routines. Some 60% of their clientele are regulars.

Besides working alongside her family, that’s Pilon’s favorite part of the gig. “We get to celebrate their milestones with them. We meet them when they’re planning a wedding, and then sometimes we get to make a baby shower cake, a first-birthday cake, they’ll come in for Mother’s Day flowers,” she says. “It’s really exciting to grow with our clients in that way.”