Connecticut
Owners of acclaimed CT eatery expanding into prepared food, French bakery business
The owners of an acclaimed restaurant in Wethersfield are expanding in two towns into the prepared meals and French bakery business.
Bryce and Kerri Hardy, owners of The Charles are poised this summer to open Bake Market in both Rocky Hill and Glastonbury.
The couple, married 10 years, are opening in two approximately 25,000-square-foot spaces once occupied by La Piastra, a catering company.
The former owner of the successful La Piastra, Lauren Siegel will work as Bake Market’s corporate catering manager, he said.
Bryce Hardy said the menu of prepared meals is not set yet, but will be influenced by the food at The Charles.
He said The Charles, which he describes as “elevated comfort food,” has been so successful they need more kitchen space and they will get some of that at the Rocky Hill site, which has a kitchen.
The Charles’ pastry chef will create sweet and savory breads and pastries to sell as well.
“We’re super excited to be in both towns,” he said. “They’re our biggest markets (for the Charles) outside of Wethersfield.”
He said residents of both towns “will be very excited” to be able to bring dinner home to their families.
He said The Charles isn’t affordable to everyone and Bake Market, a grab and go, has a “better price point than the restaurant.”
“I think restaurants aren’t for every family,” Bryce Hardy said.
Another person excited about the business expansion is Rocky Hill Mayor Lisa Marotta, who has eaten at The Charles and says, “It’s absolutely delicious.”
Marotta said she’s “thrilled” they’re coming to Silas Deane Highway near Main Street.
“We’ve been working on bringing business to that area,” Marotta said.
She said the town has added “curb appeal” with landscaping, lighting, decorative sidewalks and lamp posts.
The Charles opened in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic and has not only survived, but flourished.
They opened in a commercial space that was once a 1790 home.
Bryce Hardy said opening the restaurant was the next natural step for him after years working in the hospitality field.
The restaurant is named after two of he and Kerri’s grandfathers, both named Charles.
“Two great men in both mine and my wife’s lives,” he said. “It brings our two families together and we focus on family.
Bryce Hardy oversees it all and talks to customers, Kerri is involved with graphic design and concept development. Daughter Charlotte, 9, has a couch in the office.
Bryce Hardy said he loves Bake Market’s logo of BK because those are he and Kerri’s initials.
He said they like to “joke around” and call the restaurant their “love affair.”
He said at The Charles they have both an “amazing” executive chef in Tom Kaldry and a fabulous pastry chef. Both will oversee the culinary aspects of Bake Market, Hardy said.
He said the prepared food sold at Bake Market will be restaurant quality with fresh ingredients that are locally sourced as much as possible.
The stores will also have the top notch “hospitality” of The Charles, he said.
Bryce Hardy said he likes the hospitality aspect of the restaurant business – meeting new people, putting a smile on their faces, helping them enjoy the day.
“The restaurant business is like no other,” he said, noting it’s “never boring” and “sometimes throws curve balls.”
Connecticut
Pedestrian struck on I-95 in Milford has serious injuries
A pedestrian has serious injuries after being struck while on Interstate 95 in Milford over the weekend.
Dispatchers received a call about a pedestrian hit on I-95 South around 6:30 p.m. Sunday.
Fire officials said a car sideswiped the pedestrian’s car while he was attempting to put fuel in it.
The pedestrian suffered serious leg injuries in the collision and he was transported to Bridgeport Hospital for treatment.
The collision is under investigation. Anyone with information or anyone who may have witnessed the collision is asked to call State Police at (203) 696-2500.
Connecticut
Connecticut’s time for energy investment is now – if state leaders get on board
As a 15-year veteran of the utility industry, I can tell you with certainty there’s nowhere like Connecticut. In other states, when utility companies receive downgrades in their credit rating, regulators and consumer advocates haul them into hearings, demanding to know their plans to rectify them.
Not so in Connecticut, where regulators themselves are named as the reason for the downgrades, and policymakers like the Office of Consumer Counsel and the Chairs of the legislature’s Energy and Technology Committee work overtime to provide political cover.
Meanwhile, the scope of these downgrades – from S&P and Moody’s, two of the most respected financial institutions in the world – extend statewide, from two Avangrid companies, Eversource and all its subsidiaries, to even a small water company.
Whatever the political rhetoric, the impacts are serious and the damage long-term. Building a grid for Connecticut’s future will require billions in new investment over the decades to come, and with the downgrades warning investors to be increasingly skeptical of Connecticut utilities, every single dollar just got more expensive.
The state has a long list of goals for its economy and clear objectives for its utilities: build a modern, sustainable, reliable, resilient, renewable, innovative electric grid capable of supporting massive capacity increases from electrification and data centers. Alienating the investment community does nothing to further those goals; it only makes them less attainable.
But until PURA and state policymakers abandon their anti-utility bias, they will continue to miss today’s golden opportunity to build the energy system of tomorrow –- an opportunity other states are rigorously pursuing. Instead, the excellent reliability that customers rely on, built through a long legacy of investment, will be whittled away even as costs continue to rise.
This, to a question that Sen. Norm Needleman and Rep. Jonathan Steinberg raise in their editorial, is why companies like ours “care” if our credit rating is downgraded. We are not so short-sighted as to shrug off the consequences of higher costs for our customers.
But even more significant are the consequences to long-term energy investment in Connecticut. Utilities are some of the most capital-intensive businesses in the country. We rely on selling bonds to finance safe, reliable, high-quality service through investments like new substations, battery storage, flood walls, microgrids and more.
Downgrades signal to investors they should pull their loans, leaving us with insufficient capital to advance these innovations. Instead, utilities are forced to put what limited capital we can raise (through higher premiums on our bonds) into the most basic, fundamental projects, like storm restoration efforts or pole replacements after traffic accidents.
Accepting – and even incentivizing – PURA to enable meager investments to support only the most basic service puts Connecticut out of step with our neighbors, as other northeastern states are doing the hard work of system planning for the future. It’s no coincidence that Eversource is putting forward 30-year investment plans in Massachusetts while pulling $500 million in investments from Connecticut. Nor should it be surprising that Avangrid company New York State Electric & Gas (NYSEG) is building two 1-megawatt battery energy storage systems that tap directly into New York substations, a major resiliency investment, while nothing of the sort is happening in Connecticut.
Regulators in Massachusetts and New York are far from easy or passive. They have high standards that utilities must work hard to meet, and they do not get everything they ask for, as Needleman and Steinberg baselessly claim is our demand.
What Massachusetts and New York do is set the rules of the road for utility companies. They set clear standards of performance they expect from utility companies – in everything from the level of detail in rate cases to their forward-looking investment plans – and they hold them accountable.
That is not the case in Connecticut. Legislators can obfuscate, downplay, or even offer fictitious conspiracy theories -– most incredibly, that we would pay credit rating agencies, which are independent referees under federal law, to downgrade our credit ratings when downgrades are good for no one.
But none of these political games change the fact that energy companies cannot invest in a state in which PURA puts politically expedient rate cuts over its stated objectives. Nor will they alleviate the underinvestment these policymakers are apparently willing to accept in favor of the fabrication that PURA is “simply holding utilities accountable.”
I fear Connecticut’s energy infrastructure, and the economy it’s built on, will be left behind as other states move forward with a clear vision. The golden opportunity for investment in the energy future is now, and we are at serious risk of missing it as our regulators and policymakers prioritize waging political war on the state’s utilities. The longer they dally, the more likely it is that PURA’s actions and inaction will leave us in the dark.
Charlotte Ancel is the Vice President of Investor Relations at Avangrid, the parent company of United Illuminating, Connecticut Natural Gas, and Southern Connecticut Gas.
Connecticut
Library in South Windsor wraps up 14th annual Gingerbread House Festival
Some people found a sweet escape from Sunday’s frigid winter temperatures. A chance to step outside the cold and into a different snowy environment.
It just made it feel like Christmas,” said Michael Mizla, of Manchester.
“We try to do this every year,” said Susan, Mizla’s wife.
Sunday was the last day to check out a festive, holiday tradition at the Wood Memorial Library and Museum in South Windsor – The 14th Annual Gingerbread House Festival, which organizers say is one of the largest gingerbread house festivals in New England.
“People have made this their tradition,” said the library’s executive director Carolyn Venne. “We see the same large Vermont family every year the day after Thanksgiving on opening day. So, as people come in to see family locally, this becomes part of their tradition, and that makes it all meaningful for us.”
These gingerbread houses are on display in multiple rooms and floors throughout the library for weeks, from late November to just before Christmas.
“We probably range from about 75 to 150, and I think one year we topped out around 200,” said Venne.
Venne says behind these intricate candy creations are bakers, students, and community members.
At the end of the day, the gingerbread houses went to some lucky raffle winners or were donated to a nursing home in the area.
Those who needed to do some last-minute holiday shopping, were covered – just like the icing on these graham cracker homes – as people could visit the library’s ‘Ye Old Gingerbread Shoppe’ and take some of the magic home with them.
“The holidays are full of things you remember as a kid, so it just feels like the kind of tradition you will remember as you grow up.”
While Sunday was the last day to immerse yourself in these festive, edible villages, there are more holiday traditions coming up at the library, including a Christmas concert next Saturday at 1:30 p.m.
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