The Meltaway Bakery, a popular Saugerties sweet shop and bakery, recently moved to a new location after it outgrew its old space a few doors up the road.
“We wanted to stay in Barclay Heights and be on U.S. Route 9W,” said Andrew Pineiro, who owns and operates the bakery with wife Bridgette. “It’s a really great location with great visibility and it’s just the up the road from the old location.”
Bridgette Pineiro said the new space, formerly an auto-body shop that moved to the location previously occupied by Ward Backhaus Collision on state Route 212, offers a storefront that is at least two times bigger and gives them space to have a larger six-foot refrigerated display case along with a six-foot dry display case.
The bakery specializes in a wide range of cupcakes and brownies, including items residents may remember from Lachmann’s Bakery, a fixture on Main Street in the village for decades before it closed in 2006. Andrew Pineiro worked there for years before purchasing it from Bob Lachmann. After Lachmann’s closed, Pineiro maintained the rights to the Lachmann’s recipes and whenever he was working at another area bakery he’d bake a few of them, drawing Lachmann’s fans nearly instantly.
Specialties include the bakery’s namesake meltaway cups and coffeecakes, danishes and butter buns, along with the bakery’s ever-popular fudge cupcakes with buttercream filling and fudge icing and eclairs. The couple said these items are always top sellers.
They said they considered naming the bakery Butter Buns, but they admitted that sounded a bit too much like a strip club.
Bridgette said they anticipate expanding the menu now that they have more prep space and will look to expand their hours from their current Friday-Sunday schedule to Wednesday-Sunday.
Bridgette said they see a mixture of loyal fans who’ve frequented the bakery since they opened along with a lot of people who moved to the area from New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic. They also get tourists and out-of-state visitors. “I’m flying to Texas how do I get these meltaway cups back,” she recalled hearing a customer ask once.
Their customers include the Lachmann daughters and Bob’s wife, said Andrew.
“It’s nice to see they still like the stuff and support us, and it’s nice to have that support from the original family,” he said.
Bridgette said right now the bakery is takeout only, though that may change in the future.
“Maybe we’ll have tables outside in the fall, but we don’t have the staff to clean up and maintain the cleanliness of the area,” she said.