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For many Westside-neighborhood Santa Barbarans, it’s a tradition after dinner to drop by La Bella Rosa Bakery at 1411 San Andres St. and order hot chocolate and traditional Mexican pastries.
Regulars have described the bakery’s goods as life-changing.
The business is working to embed that experience in Goleta, after owners Rosa and Richard Guajardo opened a second bakery at 7121 Hollister Ave. #18, in the Albertsons shopping center.
The bakery opened Feb. 9, the birthday of Rosa’s father, who founded the first family business in the 1960s and the original Westside establishment in 1984.
The Goleta location, Rosa said, was previously a coffee house, and the opening was discovered by her daughter. The Guajardos also operate a cake and ice cream shop in town.
Business has been gradually ticking up since opening, she said.
“The community’s very welcoming. Although many aren’t familiar with our goods, they are coming in and trying and returning,” Guajardo said. “We have daily customers, and then we’ve also been able to retain our existing customers who have been traveling to the San Andres location.”
La Bella Rosa offers a wide array of baked goods, including all sorts of pastries, sweet breads, decorated cakes, pies, muffins, cookies and tortas, as well as coffee, tamales and burritos. The bakery also does special orders and large orders.
“We’re primarily a Hispanic bakery,” Guajardo said. “We pride ourselves in our generation recipes that we have from Guadalajara, Mexico. We started out that way years ago, and added a long line of goods.”
La Bella Rosa Bakery is open Monday through Friday from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturday 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Santa Maria Business Development Center celebrates opening
Earlier this month, the Santa Maria Business Development Center celebrated its new location in conjunction with the Santa Maria Chamber of Commerce.
Business Development Center founder and president Anne Cremarosa and Mayor Alice Patino cut the ribbon at 731 S. Lincoln St.
“We’re here to take the place of services we don’t have,” Cremarosa said in a statement. “Those other kinds of services that other cities have — the (small business development center), a local SCORE chapter — this is it.”
A self-described “launch pad for startups,” the center provides workspaces, copy/print services, Wi-Fi and telephone serves, conference rooms and other resources and services to start and expand businesses and nonprofits.
The SMBDC is also offering trainings, seminars, workshops and networking opportunities, some in partnership with the San Luis Obispo chapter of SCORE and Santa Barbara’s Women’s Economic Ventures.
Santa Maria Olive Co. announces donation to vets, plans for tasting room
The Santa Maria Olive Co. announced it is donating 100 percent of the proceeds from the first harvest of the season’s olive oil to local veterans’ organizations.
As part of joining the Santa Maria Chamber of Commerce earlier this month, Lourdez and Michael Clayton, who own the family-run business, said they were hoping to open a tasting room in 2017.
Currently, tastings and purchases can be done at Michael Clayton’s 400 E. Orange St. office from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturdays.
The Claytons’ olives come from their 6½-acre olive tree grove and their first bottling harvest was in 2015.
Cameron Goodman joins Price, Postel & Parma
Price, Postel & Parma LLC welcomed a new associate attorney this week in Cameron Goodman.
Goodman was a legal fellow at the Environmental Defense Center in Santa Barbara, and his practice revolves around land use, real estate law and estate planning, environmental law and government regulatory work.
The 164-year-old firm, at 200 E. Carrillo St., describes itself as Santa Barbara’s oldest continuous business and California’s oldest law firm.
— Noozhawk staff writer Sam Goldman can be reached at sgoldman@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.