“Fresh is best,” agreed George Ruiz and his son Chris when I started our conversation by asking them what sets Georgie’s bakery apart from all the other bakeries in town.

Georgie should know - as a fresh arrival from his native Puerto Rico to Rochester in 1976, he settled on Gregory Street where he met his soon to be wife Liz, who grew up on Sanford Street. They have been married for thirty years. Their three sons, Georgie, Chris, and Ian, all attended School 12.
Georgie, Chris, and Chris’s wife Kiyomi, work with Georgie and Liz in the shop: Liz runs the front end and does the books; she’s the organizer in the family. “I couldn’t do it without my wife,” confesses Georgie, who runs the kitchen and is responsible for the freshness and consistency of the large variety of quality foods that are created here.
Georgie started in the bakery trade as a young man in 1979, going to work for one of the large bakeries. He’s worked for a few actually, and has seen Rochester’s highs and lows in the form of layoffs and slowdowns, and what for him was the turning point and the seed from which Georgie’s Bakery would grow: his last employer asking him to sign up for a pay cut.

“No more working for someone else, we cut where we could, we committed to 80 hour work weeks where the day begins at 6AM, and we applied our personal pride and determination.” Liz left her job as a home health aide and the bakery was opened in May 2005.
But this made from scratch bakery is really only a small part of Georgie’s: Soups, Chili, Submarines, and American or Spanish platters. Specialty Breads. Spanish Pastries. Friday Fish Fry. On Saturdays, people start lining up early for Georgie’s mom Carmen to come in and prepare some traditional Spanish dinners. If you haven’t been in yet, introduce yourself to one of our great Highland Park families.

by Matthew Carnevale (The Highland Park Buzz issue#3)