TOAST

Food full of soul.

 Like many people who own a restaurant, Heather Horton never wanted to own a restaurant. 

“I watched my parents do it,” she said. “I know the hours it takes, the work it takes. It just wasn’t something I was interested in doing.”

But when the community was seeking a couple new restaurants to fill out the Block22 development, people who know Heather and her husband Roger started poking a little.

And it makes sense, really. The Hortons at the time owned and operated Sweet Designs, a successful cake and bake shop, they are passionate about helping Pittsburg thrive, and Heather is a damn good cook. 

Around that time, in fact, when Heather was teaching high school culinary classes, she started making meals to sell to the public. It was just for fun, really. The love of the game. As you can imagine, they were quite popular.

“So when they needed restaurants for Block22, some people reached out to us,” Heather said. “We met with the Small Business Development Center, started crunching some numbers, seeing what it could look like.

“Roger and I then drank quite a few beers on our back patio and agreed this seemed like the next step to grow our business.”

TOAST has been one of the hottest new restaurants on the scene since opening in 2019. Its creative take on traditional dishes, combined with the artistic aesthetic, creates an atmosphere that doesn’t necessarily feel like the Pittsburg we grew up knowing.

And that’s the point.

“Pittsburg has had enough normal,” Heather said, “and that’s not a bad thing. But if I’m going to spend the time to build something, I want it to be unique and make its own footprint.”

LOOK BOTH WAYS

TOAST is located just steps away from where the Hortons opened Sweet Designs Cakery back in 2008. Downtown looked a little different than it does today. In fact, in those days, there wasn’t really at all much to look at.

“You know those old western movies where they’ll show tumbleweed blowing down the street,” Roger asked. “Well, when we first opened Sweet Designs, I’m telling you I saw our own version of tumbleweed on Broadway. 

“We really started looking at each other and wondering what had we done. Why did we open a place downtown?”

It was a bold move. Took guts. But it also took vision. And hope. They were young, eager, and hopeful for what Downtown Pittsburg could and would be again someday. 

It also took a dogged stubbornness.

“We were told it wouldn’t work,” Heather said. “A cake shop wouldn’t work. A cake shop downtown definitely wouldn’t work. We just never believed that.”

It did work. Sweet Designs was great success and a reminder that business downtown can thrive.

Slowly, gradually, project by project, business by business, parts of downtown started coming back to life. And as it did, the Hortons started feeling better and better about their gamble. 

“We saw it happening,” Roger said. “We had a front row seat to things that started happening around us. We knew we made the right choice.”

Heather recalls how she started noticing the increased activity downtown. 

“In the beginning, when we’d take cakes out to our customers’ cars, there was never anyone walking around outside,” she said. “All of a sudden, we had to start looking both ways to see what was coming at us. More and more people were out shopping or stopping in our place.

“Also, we used to send cupcakes to any new business that opened up downtown. It was our way of welcoming them and thanking them for investing in downtown. But eventually we had to stop because we couldn’t keep up. There were just so many new businesses.”

FIND YOURSELF

The Hortons recently made the tough decision to close Sweet Designs so they could increase their focus on TOAST and its new sister business: Pittsburg Bread Co. 

The move was brought on, in part, by the Covid-19 pandemic, which began just months after TOAST first opened.

“During the shutdown, there were no events, so there really wasn’t a huge demand for cupcakes,” Heather said. “But we knew we wanted to continue to serve our community in some way. We offered curbside service at TOAST, and we shifted our focus heavily onto bread production.”

Roger is the baker – sometimes the Crooning Baker – and he said he loves the science behind baking. 

“It may seem like a simple thing, but the baking process is very interesting to me,” he said. “The timing, the ingredients, getting the right temperature. It’s kind of like being in a lab and working on a science project. Or at least that’s how my brain works. “

As you probably guessed, the Pittsburg Bread Co. “lab” is located where Sweet Designs once was, and it is the primary bread provider for TOAST.

Together, these two Pittsburg businesses are helping Pittsburg continue to grow and evolve and push things forward.

“You have a choice,” Roger said. “You can go anywhere else. You can go somewhere bigger. Go to Kansas City. You can do all that. But if you want to be somewhere that is finding itself and where you can help invent what’s around you, Pittsburg is your place.

“That’s why we’re here, why we opened our businesses here.”

Heather said Pittsburg is a place where “your voice can be heard.”

“I think you can find yourself easier here,” she said. “You don’t get muffled out by all the noise and hustle of a bigger city. If you have an idea, there are people here who will help. If you want to try something, you can do that here.”