This Renowned Baker Is Building a Food Empire in Central Jersey

For some customers, managing to secure one of the Gingered Peach’s Thanksgiving pies is the difference between a successful holiday feast and a disastrous one. Just minutes after the ordering website opens on November 1, the most popular flavors, Oh Snap (pumpkin pie with spiced gingersnap crust) and apple crumb, are gone. Often, all 12 pie varieties have been spoken for within 90 minutes.

“It’s the most stressful time of the year,” says bakery owner Joanne Canady-Brown of the scramble for the 1,200 holiday pies the Lawrenceville bakery creates each November. “I bring on extra staff to make sure the website doesn’t crash and to handle the phone calls from disappointed customers.”

The process is so stressful that she’s considering dropping the preorders and just selling the pies retail, alongside the pillowy cinnamon buns, flaky croissants and savory filled brioches that customers routinely line up to buy.

Since opening the Gingered Peach in 2014, Canady-Brown has not only cemented a loyal clientele, she’s also earned a fellowship at the James Beard Foundation, an appearance on the Today show, and the respect of business and political leaders throughout Central Jersey, providing her with opportunities to expand into new food ventures in the last few years.

When the owners of the Purple Cow ice cream shop, across a courtyard from the Gingered Peach, wanted to sell their business in 2022, landlord Gary Hullfish, who owns many properties in downtown Lawrenceville, suggested Canady-Brown take over the space. The idea appealed to her, since owning an ice cream shop was on the aspirational whiteboard she had created many years earlier.

“I said I’ll do it, but if it’s being built off Ginger Peach’s reputation, I can’t sell premade ice cream. It will continue to be a community-centered business but it will be unrecognizable,” recalls Canady-Brown. After negotiating the terms and learning to make ice cream, Melba’s Ice Creamery opened in June 2023.

That same year, David Waldman, the owner of Rojo’s Roastery in Princeton, who was looking to retire, came to Canady-Brown, who had been selling Rojo’s coffee at the bakery for years, and offered to let her run the business. She’s been running it ever since.

Construction has begun on another Lawrenceville project, a breakfast and lunch spot called Marmalade. Situated on another site owned by Hullfish, the larger venue will provide enough space to bake bread and also add 50 parking spots to downtown Lawrenceville. When asked why he repeatedly turns to Canady-Brown with each new business proposition, Hullfish answers, “She has the drive. Others can only put in so much effort, and then they quit. She’s not a quitter.”

When Starbucks bailed on its downtown Trenton space last year, to the outcry of local and state leaders, Canady-Brown was tapped as the savior. Aware of her reputation, former Trenton mayor Doug Palmer approached her about becoming a Starbucks franchisee. Instead, she proposed creating a flagship Rojo’s Roastery and bakery training center, a project that is now underway.

“Her food is unbelievable,” says Palmer, who regularly brings his 100-year-old father the Gingered Peach’s cinnamon buns. “She’s authentic and has a social conscience. She’s really going to bring hope back to downtown Trenton.”

Known for her social consciousness, she doesn’t believe in selling day-old goods and instead gives all the unsold pastries from the Gingered Peach to the Trenton Area Food Kitchen. That same organization was one of two area outreach programs that she designated to receive $25,000 each from the Today show when she was recognized with their women in business award; the other one was the I Am Trenton Community Foundation.

Canady-Brown’s drive and community-mindedness began in the two-bedroom West New York apartment she shared with her parents and four siblings. Her mother was from Georgia, with Italian and Southern roots, and taught high school history, while her Black father, who had been disabled from polio at 17, became the stay-at-home parent. “The only thing we lacked in that home was money,” says Canady-Brown. “There was love and support, and parents always willing to cheer for you.”

Her interest in food came from baking after school with her Southern grandmother, Johnnie Nell. “I found my love of food through her,” she says.

After graduating from High Tech High School in North Bergen and earning a B.A. in economics from Rutgers University, Canady-Brown waitressed at Johnny Rockets, was a project manager for Bed, Bath and Beyond, and worked at Panera Bread, where she learned the business of making and selling food.

The Gingered Peach’s 26 employees produce 3,800 to 4,100 pieces of pastry a day, using high-quality ingredients like Isigny Sainte Mère butter, Callebaut chocolate and King Arthur flour. Across the way at Melba’s, another 11 employees (including Canady-Brown’s 14-year-old daughter, Zoe) are serving up inventive flavors of ice cream like honey lavender and blueberry crisp.

“It’s been a wild ride,” says Canady-Brown of her growing food empire. “None of it makes any sense. Wait a minute—it does make sense, because I put it all on the whiteboard.”