Cadinho Bakery, an online bakery specializing in Portuguese tarts, cakes, and bread, is looking to open its first brick-and-mortar shop in McKinley Park.
The new bakery will sit at the corner of 35th Street and Archer Avenue and will open sometime next year, according to Block Club Chicago. Owner Maria Alejandra Rivera fell in love with Portugal after living there for three years. Since moving to Chicago, she has taken what she learned and started baking and selling these treats through her social media. Although this new storefront won’t open until 2023, interested customers can get a sneak peek of what’s to come by ordering through her online shop on social media.
Rivera, born and raised in Honduras, where food was considered the family’s love language, immediately started taking online baking classes upon her arrival in Chicago. Once she felt confident with her baking, she asked the community if they would be interested in buying traditional Portuguese pastries. After a massive positive response, she decided to launch Cadinho, which translates to ‘just a little bit’ in Portuguese slang. A week after posting the feeler, her inbox was flooding, and she had her first business labels printed
“So many of our customers were saying like, ‘Oh, you should open a cafe,'” Rivera tells Block Club Chicago. “The need for a mom-and-pop shop, it’s tangible. I never imagined that this could become something like that. The idea of a Portuguese cafe kind of gave me the hope of holding on to the good time that I spent in Portugal. It was a really hard time to come back.”
