Hard to say, but easy to digest

DURHAM - Guglhupf, the "old world" bakery that Claudia Cooper and Hartmut Jahn started in Durham on a wing and a prayer three years ago, is taking off.

Cooper and Jahn are considering several ideas to grow the business: Expand to a second location with more foot traffic; turn the backyard patio that leads to the bakery's entrance doors into an outdoor garden cafe; and - Jahn's dream - open a Bavarian biergarten where people can sit a spell, sip and snack.

Until they decide what to do next, the German entrepreneurs are finalizing a redesign of their Web site to take and fill orders from across the United States for their breads, rolls, pretzels, pastries and cakes.

In the beginning, they worried whether people would accept their products, says Jahn as he sits on the patio and watches a steady stream of customers go into the store and come out clutching paper bags.

"It cost a lot of energy to turn this into a location," he says. "That we survived in the back of a building is due to (the quality) of our products."

In Germany, where thousands of large and small bakeries offer similar delights everywhere, Guglhupf would face stiff competition. But in south Durham, near the edge of Duke University's West Campus, the bakery is attracting a growing number of customers who value European baked goods made fresh and from scratch six days a week.

To meet European quality standards, Guglhupf uses Belgian chocolate and French fruit mousses, cultivates its own sourdough starter and bans preservatives, additives and artificial flavors or colors. The flour is American, but the bakers adjust recipes to accommodate for the flour's higher starch content. The equipment comes from France and Germany.

Among the customers are Europeans working and studying in the Triangle; well-traveled executives such as Robert Ingram, GlaxoSmithKline chief operating officer; and Americans with a liking of fine foods with a worldly flair.

The cafeteria at IBM in Research Triangle Park became one of the bakery's select corporate accounts after one of the company's chefs discovered Guglhupf and became a regular customer.

Several doctors have sent patients to help them start eating a healthier diet. European breads generally contain more dietary fiber, vitamins, minerals and complex carbohydrates while the pastries have less sugar and fat than their American counterparts.

Jahn and Cooper had this very European concept of a bakery in mind when they set out to find a location in a growing area along the East Coast four years ago.

Cooper, who has a marketing background and a degree from Hood College in Frederick, Md., had just completed a two-year apprenticeship as a pastry chef in Munich and was itching to tap into the revival of the "micro" industry in the United States. Jahn, an engineer for a U.S. software company in Munich, was tired of the corporate bureaucracy.

Traveling along the East Coast, they conducted market research by buying hundreds of loaves of bread. They decided that Washington, D.C., and Charleston, S.C., were too expensive, and they didn't think the population of Savannah, Ga., could support the bakery they envisioned.

They settled on the Triangle for its proximity to the ocean and its vitality. They set up shop in Durham with three employees and used equipment.

As foreign nationals, they couldn't qualify for a loan, so they financed the start-up costs by dipping into their savings. Jahn took out a second mortgage on his condominium in Munich.

Business took off quickly, Jahn recalls. Today, Guglhupf employs 12 and has about $1 million in revenues. Although his parents still don't understand their son's career choice, Jahn says the decision to quit his corporate job and risk everything in a foreign country has been worth it.

"We wanted to know whether we could do it on our own," he says. What Cooper and he found out, he adds, is that in the United States, "for industrious Europeans, there are more opportunities."