By: Jonathan Szczepaniak | Metro | Published May 3, 2023
METRO DETROIT — Warm and comfortable environments are what attract customers to come back and even make the customer feel like they’re conversing with a friend.
The businesses that tend to bring that feeling out of customers are traditionally small businesses, and as Mother’s Day approaches, the focus shifts towards mothers and daughters who have not only created a strong bond between each other, but also through their customers and soon-to-be friends through their businesses.
Fox and Hounds Pastry Den
From a simple walk inside Fox and Hounds Pastry Den, it’s no surprise to anyone why their clientele consists of a substantial number of regulars.
Aside from the soothing music of Frank Sinatra and Michael Bublé you may hear in the background, both Monica Nacianceno and daughter Monica Guzman said they are always prepared to converse with any customer who comes through the door.
“I wanted it to be a place where they’re going to walk in and they’re going to feel warm, and I wanted it to feel cozy,” Nacianceno said. “When I’m on the other side right there or I’m in the back and I come up front and I hear people talking and I hear someone say, ‘God, this place is so cozy,’ when I hear that word, that’s my keyword.”
Nacianceno and Guzman opened up the pastry shop, which is known for its buttercream, in 2016, and modeled the black and gold interior after the iconic Fox and Hounds Pastry Den in Bloomfield Hills, which closed its doors in 2007.
Guzman said the store was always in the cards for the ladies.
“We always talked about opening something,” Guzman said. “It was always the plan.”
Nacianceno has always had the mind of a baker, and she has her mother, who always baked her homemade treats as a child, to thank for that.
After opening her own small dessert company in 2005, Nacianceno was in need of all hands on deck with every delivery.
Sharing that love and passion with her daughter, it wasn’t a surprise to Nacianceno that Guzman was up early during the weekend to help her mother with dessert deliveries.
“It’s funny; ever since she was young and still in high school, she’d get up at six in the morning, because that’s when we’d start putting together some of the little minis, you know, some of the desserts,” Nacianceno said. “We did a lot of them for weddings, because a wedding is when you can bring your desserts in. You can’t take food in there, but you can bring the cake, so we’d usually start in the morning, and she would get up. It was pretty cool that she didn’t mind getting up and that she was into it. She’d get up, and we had our own thing, and we had it down really well.”
With delicious cupcakes, macaroons and other various treats, Fox and Hounds Pastry Den’s greatest treat is the bond between Guzman, Nacianceno and their customers.
As for Guzman and Nacianceno’s work relationship, it’s as strong as can be.
“It’s been good,” Nacianceno said. “We’re not always going to agree — I tell you that. We don’t always agree, but we always come up with a compromise. She thinks I work too much, so we don’t agree on that.”
Just Girls Women’s Boutique
A mother-daughter duo that has gone far beyond retail, mother Jill and daughter Katie Oleski’s relationship has led to a successful, community-minded boutique store.
They support various foundations focused on domestic violence, Alzheimer’s disease and garden clubs, and they offer donations of their customer’s choice via their private parties at the store.
“I don’t ever want to give that up, because that’s our ground on how we started,” Jill Oleski said. “It’s taxing in that we’re running around like cuckoos all the time, but it’s important.”
When they’re not traveling around the midwest doing events for different organizations, Jill and Katie are continuing to build family-like relationships with their customers.
While retail may not have been in the plans for Katie, who went to medical school at Michigan State University, she and her mother possessed a passion for something that would forever be a part of their lives.
“I realized (medicine) wasn’t for me, and I missed people and retail,” Katie Oleski said. “When I decided to do that and I came home, because she was just doing all the local charity events by herself and with my dad too, and then when I decided I was going to give up med school, then we were like, ‘Well, let’s open a store.’”
A few years later, Just Girls Women’s Boutique has captivated the Bloomfield Hills community with their impressive collection of women’s wear for all ages and with a warm and friendly atmosphere as well.
Like most successful teams, Jill and Katie fill in the blanks for each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
“My mom is definitely the visionary, so my mom is always, since I was a young age, she’s always been very artistic,” Katie Oleski said. “It’s funny because she put me through Cranbrook, and I can’t even draw a stick figure; it’s really bad. She used to do my art homework. She’s very visual, and I’m very much organized — everything has to be perfect and a certain way. I like things done very meticulously, and my mom comes in and is the visionary. She’ll do one thing, and I’ll circle back and fix it a certain way.”
Scandia Home
Appointed the “girlfriend store” by both its customers and owner Christine Jackson, Scandia Home in Birmingham — which has been open for 13 years — has a different dynamic than most businesses. As opposed to the traditional mother-daughter dynamic, Jackson will be the first one to tell you that she’s blessed to work with two of her daughters, Mariah and Danielle Schindler.
“It’s so fun, because people will be in the store and they’ll hear someone go ‘mom,’ and they’re like, ‘What? You guys are mother and daughters and you work together?’” Jackson said. “Most people just love it. It’s really fun.”
A warm and comfortable atmosphere for any customer looking to improve their bedding and pillow decor, Scandia Home has the feeling of a traditional small business mixed with the feeling of walking into a friend’s house.
It’s the “girlfriend store” because customers-turned friends will swing by the store just to chat with the family.
Danielle Schindler said the store possesses an at-home feeling.
“We have a lot of fun,” Schindler said. “There’s not a lot of difference between our personal lives and professional lives. It’s like a second home in some ways.”
Like their personal lives, Jackson and her daughters are not afraid to joke with each other any chance they get based on their styles; each of the three will buy for the store, so designs of all areas are showcased.
“I think one of the coolest things is how eclectic it is in here,” Mariah Schindler said. “All three of us do some buying, so you can kind of see everyone’s personality throughout the store. We make fun of each other’s tastes, but it’s also very much in fun. We know there’s a customer for everything we pick, but we just poke fun at each other.”
At the end of the day, it’s family over everything for them, especially Mariah and Danielle, who shared a bedroom growing up in a family of five children.
Mariah and Danielle’s time outside of work is also spent together.
“We work out together every morning. I’m at her house tons of nights a week for dinner. Our kids are really close,” Mariah Schindler said. “We spend tons of time together.”