By Allie Spletter
When they said “I do” on March 14, 2015, Leah and Alex Clark had no idea just how sweet their story would end up being. Yes, you read that right, the entrepreneurial couple that owns Frisco’s own Batch Bakery that serves pies in addition to other confections got married on Pi Day (Their anniversary date is 3.14.15…the first few digits of Pi are 3.1415…I mean, come on!) At the time, the Clarks had just moved to the Dallas area from Houston, and opening their own bakery was but a dream.
While their anniversary is very much a coincidence, and they hadn’t planned on pies being a staple of their business, Leah always wanted to own a bakery. “It was a goal of mine. I always thought, ‘When I’m 50, I’ll own a bakery.’ That was my mindset. So, I worked at bakeries in Houston. I went to culinary school, worked at a bread bakery, moved to Dallas, worked for different franchises, and was a training manager. So, I trained franchisees to open up their own bakery,” Leah recalls. Little did she know, in being the one to train franchise owners in opening their own storefronts, Leah was, in turn, teaching herself and gaining confidence with the help of a mentor who guided her in business management, staff management, and overall success.
“When the opportunity presented itself for this to happen in April of 2020, COVID wasn’t in the plans, but it’s just how God laid out our plans, and we’re here three and a half years later,” she explains.
Any business owner knows the importance of a name, and in choosing a namesake for the business and having worked for so many bakeries over the years, Leah knew she wanted something short and impactful. “We wanted something that we knew we could develop…a batch of cakes, a batch of pies, a batch of brownies…I love the name,” Leah admits.
With Leah’s culinary background and Alex’s marketing background, the Clarks were able to bring Batch Bakery to life while offering a variety of pie flavors in addition to cakes and cookies. Leah runs the day-to-day operations of the bakery while Alex is an instructional designer in the corporate world, though they still work closely together when it comes to the bakery.
Their pie menu features six flavors that are offered year-round, which are set and do not change. They include Key Lime, a divine blend of sweet and tart; Chocolate Cream, an Oreo crust filled with chocolate filling; Apple, with a cinnamon sugar apple mixture topped with a brown sugar crumble; Pecan Chocolate, a delicious pecan pie with chocolate chips added; Peanut Butter, a whipped peanut butter filling in an Oreo crust, and Coconut Cream, a light coconut filling with Italian meringue.
“Those we have year-round, always. And then, every month, we always have a new seasonal flavor. So, except for right now, during the fall, September, October, and November, we have pumpkin,” Leah says. “Normally, it’s just October and November, but this year, in September, everyone was like, pumpkin, please!”
The seasonal flavors Batch Bakery offers are where Leah and her staff are able to have fun with new flavor combinations, and with a young staff, she keeps an open mind to trying new things. “I have a young staff, and last Spring, they told me that strawberry crunch bars were so trendy right now on TikTok. And I’m like, ‘I don’t know what that is, but how can we turn it into a pie?’ so my manager Sierra and I literally created this pie, and it was so much fun. We were giggling in the back, trying all kinds of things trying to get it right. And in the end, it was such a good pie, I still think about it! It was a graham cracker crust. It was jello mixed with Cool Whip strawberry ganache with melted white chocolate and strawberry puree, golden Oreos pulsed with freeze-dried strawberries,” Leah recalls. Of the monthly and seasonal flavors, Leah and her staff try to tie their flavors to the season in some way. December’s flavor will be Chocolate Turtle, which will be a fudge brownie pie with caramel bits and pecans.
Every recipe used in the bakery is crafted by Leah, and while they’re traditional flavors, she adds her own twists and distinctions to the classics to really make them stand out. “…Like our chocolate cream pie is kind of like a French silk, but it’s on an Oreo press, so it’s not a traditional, but traditional flavors with the twist,” she explains. One big difference guests will find at Batch Bakery is they don’t do the flaky crust that most are used to on an apple pie. Their crust is a shortbread cookie crust, and that’s the crust for most of their pies. “Of course, key lime is on graham cracker, chocolate cream, and peanut butter on Oreo,” Leah clarifies.
In speaking of a bit of a twist on traditional, Batch’s pumpkin pie has 30 ingredients! “We put cream cheese in there and half and half, so it’s creamy without being a cream pie,” Leah says. “And we add the crumble that’s on the apple pie to it…we put a little of the brown sugar crumble in the middle, so it melts that buttery goodness in there.” While different bakers have so many methodologies in their crafts, Leah and Alex believe the quality and freshness of ingredients, the balance of flavors, and even the order in which ingredients are mixed all play large roles in their products being top-notch. “We never skimp on ingredients, and we make everything from scratch. You can taste that difference. I always feel weird when I’m recommending stuff to friends or coworkers, and they ask, ‘What do you like there?’ I like everything, and I’m not just part owner with my wife – I’m a frequent guest!” explains Alex.
In addition to pies 9-inch pies and 4-inch pies, Batch Bakery offers Batch Bites, which are assorted dozens of their top pie flavors in bite-sized cups, and Cake Batch Bites pre-assorted in vanilla, chocolate, and red velvet. Additionally, the bakery offers decorated number cakes as well as 6-inch and 3-inch cakes, including a vanilla cake topped with buttercream frosting and a burst of sprinkles, chocolate cake with chocolate chips topped with buttercream frosting and sprinkles, or a specialty cake guests can create with premium toppings, including Oreos, Reese’s coconut shavings, or cotton candy bits.
As Batch has grown and expanded both its flavors and offerings, the Clarks, too, have grown, having started a family since the inception of the bakery, which has taught them much about balance and teamwork. Leah and Alex admit that when it was just the two of them, it was much easier when Leah had to work late. Since Leah and Alex have welcomed their daughter, Julia, that teamwork and balancing of schedules honed early on have come in clutch.
“Now, with Julia, I have so much mom guilt when I’m not home. It makes me sad even though she’s not going to remember it, so it’s hard. But also, I know it’s like we’re doing this for her, so I have to remind myself that. And he [Alex] doesn’t make me feel guilty,” Leah shares. Alex admits that having their daughter together has only helped them personally and professionally. He shares, “More than anything, especially once we had Julia, it required us to work better together and collaborate more. And to me, it ultimately works out just fine, and we’re both husband and wife and partners and business partners…and it’s almost made the husband-and-wife aspect even better.”
For the Clark family, Frisco wasn’t simply somewhere for their business to thrive but somewhere to raise a family as well, which was important to the husband/wife duo. “I just love this area,” Leah says of choosing Frisco as Batch Bakery and their family’s home. Alex adds, “It wasn’t just a place for us to start our business, but also where we wanted to raise our tribe. So, we knew we wanted to be here, especially once we had kids. We knew we wanted to be in Frisco, so we live ten minutes from here, and we plan on being here around Frisco for a long while.”
As Batch Bakery continues to flourish in Frisco, Leah’s hope remains that customer service continues to be what sets the bakery apart from the competition. She believes that a prompt and sincere “hello” or “welcome in” as soon as a guest enters the bakery adds that extra element of both sincerity and familiarity to what might be an unfamiliar situation for someone visiting the bakery for the first time. (We saw this in action as we were taking photographs of Leah and Alex for the article when a customer walked in, and through his huge, genuine smile Alex said “Hi, welcome in!” to the customer that had entered) “I really just want people to feel like ‘this is my home,’ because it is my second home,” Leah says. “I’m teaching my staff to learn people’s names as well. I want to make our guests feel special, and that’s also why I call them guests. I don’t call them clients or customers. They’re our guests. They’re guests in my home.”
As the Clarks and Batch Bakery continue to flourish in Frisco, their hope is to keep growing and to be everyone’s one-stop shop when it comes to sweets for celebrations of any kind. “I would love Frisco to know that we are here for every celebration…for birthdays, Thanksgiving, and anniversaries, and our big goal would be to open up a second location,” Leah says.
Back on Pi Day in 2015, Leah and Alex had no idea they’d one day own a storefront bakery in Frisco, Texas – let alone that it would be a bakery that started out featuring scratch-made pies and eventually offered even more incredible sweets. Regardless of the irony of their anniversary date, their sweet little bakery in The Shops at Starwood has become a Frisco favorite, and each Batch keeps getting better and better.
Batch Bakery is located at 5333 Dallas Parkway, Suite 610, Frisco. To learn more or place your order, visit www.batchbakery.net or call 972.740.3287.
