Jay Spencer makes his way around French Press Bakery & Cafe with the ease of someone who’s been in the business since he was 15 years old. Customers smile and nod his way, stopping him for a quick chat. After a decade both Spencer and his signature spot have become Needham institutions.
Entering this milestone year, Spencer reflected on his path to the Press — successes and strains — and his hopes for the restaurant as he looks to the next decade.
Spencer grew up in Ohio, where he started in the restaurant industry as many do: washing dishes. He worked as a cook for a period of time, but had his sights set on the front of the house where his affable personality was a perfect fit. After college, he worked in operations and strategy, earned a master’s degree in business, and worked in the corporate world for several years. When he decided it was time to make a change, he knew he wanted to go back to his roots: food.
“Everything I’ve done has always been operations management, right?” said Spencer. “Making things, producing things, making sure that they’re consistent, making sure that the customer is happy with what you’re producing.” These skills translated well in his pivot to restauranteur.
Having travelled through Europe during his time in the business world, he said, “I became enamored by the intricacies of French patisserie.” After taking a course at the New York Culinary Institute on culinary entrepreneurship, Spencer made his foray into the Needham restaurant scene when he purchased Petit Robert Bistro at 45 Chapel St.
Spencer used those years to cultivate a robust patisserie menu with a full-time pastry chef who developed recipes and helped formulate his vision. When Taylor’s Stationery at 1451 Highland Ave. downsized, he carved out a portion of the space and finally began putting that vision into action.
“For the better part of five to six years, we did really well in that space,” he said. “We kept growing and growing, staying true to our philosophy, producing, using all natural ingredients. Our baker would come in at like 8 o’clock at night and wouldn’t leave until 5 o’clock in the morning, but everything went from dough to proofing to baking to finishing.”
In those early years, French Press served pastries, desserts and coffee, and it became a spot for moms to meet up after school dropoff or folks to meet to close a business deal — a go-to neighborhood joint. “We became a place for everybody,” said Spencer. Today, the cafe serves more than 250 menu items, has a full lunch menu, and draws regular customers from neighboring towns.
Executive pastry chef Arthur Davtian said the welcoming feeling starts in the back of the house. “Behind the scenes we’re so diverse as well,” he said. “I feel like that kind of shows in front too, and it’s a sense of comfort.”
The consistency of the products and the people, said Davtian, also creates a feeling of comfort and brings people back time after time. “People can make it a part of their everyday life to come get their coffee or have a chat with one of the baristas, and it gives people a place to come to.”
Having been with Spencer since 2015, he’s seen the business grow and has learned a lot himself. “He’s a great mentor. He gave me the opportunity to buy into this.” Now Davtian runs the whole kitchen.
In his 15-plus years in town, Spencer has seen a lot of change, fought his way through the pandemic alongside many small businesses, and has some strong ideas about how Needham can help its business community thrive.
“I think that when you have a vision and it’s different than what anybody has ever seen, you have to stay true to what you want,” said Spencer. “A lot of what we wanted to have is revolutionary when it should be evolutionary,” he said of getting new ideas such as his outdoor seating parklet passed in town. “There is a lot of resistance. I don’t think that we’ve been successful at everything that we want to do, but we’ve gone to the mat and fought really hard for things that we feel will make us more unique and give the town more than what it offers right now.”
Spencer was one of the first business owners to reach out to Eileen Baker, who opened Proud Mary on Great Plain Avenue six and a half years ago. “I felt very embraced by him,” she said. “He wanted to know so much about the business and was interested in what was going to be special about my store, what it was going to bring to the community.”
Baker said French Press is not only a town staple, but brings customers in from everywhere, which in turn drives up business for surrounding stores. “He’s just a good, solid person, and he truly cares about the community and the business community.”
Aside from the COVID years, Spencer said his biggest struggle is staffing. “The biggest challenge for me is and always has been finding labor,” he said. “This isn’t a community where most kids work, right? So our people commute in. This isn’t a community where people have the talent to produce handmade patisserie, right? So you’ve got to start looking for attributes that people have for them to be trainable and invest that time, but in return you want the commitment from one day because it takes me a good two to three months, easily, just to train one person.”
Kristen Collins began as a customer, but when she decided to take on some work as her kids were getting older, she knew just the spot. Today, she is the operations manager and oversees the catering business. She said she has also learned a lot from Spencer. “Jay is a master operations manager,” she said. “I came here to learn the business, and I learn the business every single day.”
She agreed with Davtian that the combination of quality and commitment to the community makes French Press stand out. “I just think that’s what makes it special, that it’s got that little, you know, localness.”
His longevity in the town’s business community has given Spencer insight into how things get done and the roadblocks for small businesses to succeed, and he has some thoughts on changes that could benefit those hoping to hang a shingle in Needham. For starters, he said, Needham needs to become more of a destination.
“People have to want to come to Needham to do one thing,” he said. “And that one thing then has to spur into something else.” He believes the town should be more intentional about creating opportunities that draw people in to create a vibrancy for its stores and restaurants.
“This town has a lot to offer,” he said. “(Leaders) should be more in tune with ways to bring more volume and recognition to the town. Don’t just follow the formulaic that it wants to be beautiful and it’s sitting there like the Mona Lisa. All right? There are things that we can all do to contribute to the economic vitality of the town. Because at the end of the day, it translates to more meals, taxes, more revenue, right?”
Spencer also believes that certain zoning restrictions and health regulations create challenges and increased costs that other towns don’t present and perhaps make opening a small business in Needham more complicated than in other locations.
“There are things that increase your cost (like) changing health codes,” he said. “And some of the things that they want you to do are their interpretation of that health code. This isn’t the way that other towns are doing it because I call over to the other towns and to ask them how do they handle these issues. And they say, ‘We don’t have them.’ The requirements here are a lot higher. That doesn’t mean that we want to cheapen things or make things less safe, but there’s a cost of doing business associated with that.”
Spencer said being able to thrive for the past decade means he’s had the right people at his side. “I can’t run this place by myself,” he said. “So to be able to have customers gravitate and people behind the scenes that you will never see who are up here every day and make it happen, it’s just more than what I could ever ask for.”
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