Support Chef Sergey’s Final Renovation

Help Us Cross the Finish Line: Support Chef Sergey’s Bakery

Dear friends, neighbors, and kind hearts,

We are the team behind Chef Sergey’s Bakery — a small family-owned business born from a dream, built with our hands, and fueled by love and grit. Over the past year, we’ve poured everything we had — time, energy, resources, and soul — into transforming an abandoned popcorn shop into a warm, welcoming bakery that brings life and flavor to the heart of Midland. The renovation alone took us a full year before we could even open our doors. We didn’t just launch a business — we rebuilt a space from the ground up, piece by piece, so we could create something beautiful for the entire community.

Thanks to the incredible support of Jack Pfenninger, Indira and Ed Oskvarek, Global Compassion, and generous loans from the Midland Foundation ($400,000) and Isabel Bank ($60,000), we were able to make this dream a reality. But dreams come with responsibility. Every month, we meet our obligations — rent, salaries, loan repayments — and we’re also gradually paying off a $34,000 balance to our electrician for the work he completed. We’re doing everything we can to stay on track.

Now, we’ve reached the very final step — completing the last exterior renovation work required for our Final Occupancy Permit. This includes metal siding, roofing, trim, and other code-compliant finishes on the freezer addition and rear facade. The cost for this work is $11,140, and it must be paid to our contractor, before the work can proceed.

We’ve come so far — but right now, we simply don’t have the funds to complete this last step. We’re not a business that’s “raking in profits.” We’re a group of immigrants, refugees, parents, and dreamers who took a leap of faith, opened a bakery in a small town, and committed to building something meaningful and lasting for our neighbors.

If you’ve enjoyed our bread, our croissants, or our kindness — if you believe that small, honest businesses matter — we ask for your help. Your donation, no matter the size, will help us finish what we started. We’ve placed a donation jar with a QR code in the center of our bakery to make it easy to support, or you can give right here on this page.

Thank you for walking this path with us. With your help, we’ll keep our doors open, keep baking, and keep giving back to the community that welcomed us with open arms.

With love and gratitude,

Sergey, Christina, Natalia, and Maga at Chef Sergey’s Bakery