"Have thirty-six loaves of bread on the shelf and would not sell one of them because no one came in." That is how Robert Smythe described a bad weekday at Pastry Pants in his interview with the Swarthmore Phoenix. On Saturdays, the same shop had lines out the door. On Saturday, Oct. 3, the bakery at 10 Park Ave. closed for good after three years.
Both facts point the same way. Downtown Swarthmore's food life runs on one morning a week. With the bakery gone, fresh bread in the borough now arrives the same way it did before Pastry Pants opened: on folding tables in the Park Avenue parking lot, for three hours, until the market season ends on Nov. 21.
How a Driveway Bakery Became a Park Avenue Fixture
Pastry Pants did not start as a storefront. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Smythe opened it in fall 2023 in his Swarthmore driveway. Lines stretched around his house, and he hired his first full-time employee six days after opening, in a town that had no bakery of its own. When the brunch spot Occasionally Yours closed in March 2024, Smythe pitched its owners on taking over the space. Pastry Pants moved into it that May.
The pastry case went well beyond a typical suburban bakery: Portuguese pastéis de nata, German Brötchen, Mexican panes de muerto, lemon curd tarts topped with pistachios and pomegranate, and apple cider donuts. Smythe told the Inquirer that the shop and Celia Bookshop, which opened at 102 Park Ave. in October 2025, made it feel like "there was an anchor to our downtown."
Why the Numbers Stopped Working
Smythe gave several reasons for closing, and most of them come back to when people show up. He told the Inquirer that downtown saw little foot traffic outside Saturday mornings. Some weekdays brought no customers at all, and this summer was "very, very bad." He told the Phoenix that Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday were often empty, and that careful record-keeping still didn't make demand predictable.
He also pointed to geography. Heavy traffic on Chester Road runs alongside the town center, not through it. In his words, drivers passing through "don't know that we're there, so every business has to be a destination."
Costs made it harder. Smythe said ingredients rose sharply after 2023, including Madagascar vanilla and cocoa, both hit by tariffs in April 2025. He also could not hire a bread baker, so he did the baking himself, starting at 5 a.m. Closing now, he said, lets him wind down before the slow winter season.
The wider bread supply around Swarthmore was already changing. The Phoenix noted that Metropolitan Bakery supplied bread to the Swarthmore Co-op and is now wholesale-only. The Inquirer reported in March that Metropolitan's Rittenhouse shop would close for good on March 15, 2026, after its founders sold the brand to Pete Merzbacher. Wholesale and mail order continue under the Metropolitan name. The Co-op hasn't posted anything recent about its bread shelf, so the best answer there is to look at what's on it.
Where Saturday's Bread Comes From Now
The Swarthmore Farmers Market runs Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon in the borough parking lot at 121 Park Ave. The 2026 season ends Nov. 21, and the market averages 19 vendors a week. Its bakers follow a rotation by week of the month. Big Sky Bread Co. of Wilmington and Kismet Bagels of Philadelphia come every week. Hank's Cinnamon Buns of West Chester and Cedar Creek Catering of Delaware County come on 2nd, 4th and 5th Saturdays. Market Day Canele comes on 1st, 3rd and 5th Saturdays, and Unruly Nature granola on 1st and 3rd Saturdays.
Here is how that rotation falls across the rest of the season, which the Town Center calendar also lists week by week:
| Saturday | Week of month | Bakery vendors on the posted rotation |
|---|---|---|
| Oct. 17 | 3rd | Big Sky Bread Co., Kismet Bagels, Market Day Canele, Unruly Nature |
| Oct. 24 | 4th | Big Sky Bread Co., Kismet Bagels, Hank's Cinnamon Buns, Cedar Creek Catering |
| Oct. 31 | 5th | Big Sky Bread Co., Kismet Bagels, Hank's Cinnamon Buns, Cedar Creek Catering, Market Day Canele |
| Nov. 7 | 1st | Big Sky Bread Co., Kismet Bagels, Market Day Canele, Unruly Nature |
| Nov. 14 | 2nd | Big Sky Bread Co., Kismet Bagels, Hank's Cinnamon Buns, Cedar Creek Catering |
| Nov. 21 | 3rd | Big Sky Bread Co., Kismet Bagels, Market Day Canele, Unruly Nature |
Halloween falls on a fifth Saturday, so Oct. 31 has the longest bakery lineup of the season. The rotation is a schedule, not a promise. The market's own listing for Oct. 10 left out Hank's even though it was a 2nd Saturday. Check the weekly "coming to market" note before you plan around one vendor. The market is also open rain or shine, and most stands accept the Swarthmore College OneCard.
The Weekday Gap Has a Few Fillers
On Tuesday at 8 a.m., the choices are smaller. Hobbs Coffee at 1 Park Ave. lists hours of 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekends, per its website. A Phoenix feature this spring described its bagels, a salted double-chocolate cookie and a variety of pastries. A Sept. 29, 2026 Montco Today day-trip guide suggested Hobbs as the place to start a day in Swarthmore.
Across the tracks, Swarthmore College's Kohlberg Coffee Bar is open to the public. It serves coffee, locally baked pastries, bagels and pretzels on weekdays during the September to May term, according to the College's dining hours page. That's not a bakery. It is one of the few places in walking distance of the town center selling pastry on a weekday morning.
The gap between the campus and the town center matters here. Smythe told the Phoenix that fewer students came in than he expected, given how close the campus is. He said he baked only three cakes for students the whole time he was on Park Avenue. Weekday customers were close by. Few of them made the walk.
A Friday Night Market Aims at the Same Problem
The Town Center's best answer to quiet weekdays this month is a Friday evening. The Merchant Night Market runs Friday, Oct. 23, from 5 to 8 p.m. It's a repeat event. The Town Center held earlier editions on Oct. 24, 2025 and April 24, 2026.
Patch's listing gives it a fall and Halloween theme on Park Avenue: local makers, music, face painting, trick-or-treating, crafts and a live pumpkin-carving demonstration, with costumes welcome. The vendor list includes Briar Candles, Herb's Herbals, Jerrys Pickles, That's My Jam!, Sharon Katrice Knits and Mermaid Metal. The food trucks are Federal Donuts & Chicken, Humpty's Dumplings, The Clean Plate Club Truck, Savannah's Southern Cuisine and Lukie's Long Hots. Patch also says many local businesses will stay open late that night, but it doesn't name which ones.
That weekend is the busiest stretch of the month. The Oct. 24 farmers market falls on a 4th Saturday, so Hank's and Cedar Creek are on the rotation. On Sunday, Oct. 25, the Town Center's STC Cornhole Tournament runs from 1 to 2 p.m. In Wallingford, the Community Arts Center's free Fall Fest runs that same Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 414 Plush Mill Road. It has an arts-and-crafts market, studio and garden tours, pumpkin painting, live music and a Potters Guild open house.
After November 21
The farmers market's last day this season is Saturday, Nov. 21, a 3rd Saturday with Big Sky, Kismet, Market Day Canele and Unruly Nature on the rotation. After that, Swarthmore will be without a weekly bread table, a bakery, or Metropolitan's retail shop in the city for the first time since Smythe started baking in his driveway in 2023. No new tenant for 10 Park Ave. has been reported. Smythe is working on a cookbook of his most popular recipes.
For anyone keeping the Saturday habit, six market mornings are left on the calendar.
A closed storefront on Park Avenue tells you something about how a town center works, and about the space that will sit open over the winter. If you'd like to talk about what that means for your own place in Swarthmore or Wallingford, Maria Doyle is glad to share what she's seeing. Schedule Your Private Consultation.
