Meet Brittany Chadwick! Brittany is the Operational Manager at the new Puzzle Piece Pastries on Thompson Bridge Road in Gainesville. Puzzle Piece is set to open in August and is a bakery creating job opportunities and job training for people with Autism and other disabilities. They will offer breakfast, lunch and tasty treats including ice cream.
We want to thank Brittany for spending time with us recently and telling us more about her life and love of Hall County.

Q: Please tell us a little bit about you and your family. 

A: “My husband’s name is Zach Chadwick, we have a daughter, her name is Avery and we have a dog, his name’s Clyde. We are local to Gainesville, we’ve lived in here our whole lives. We went to Chestatee High School. We live on a 21 acre farm. I think we have 10 chickens and four horses, it’s a lot of fun. It’s a project, there’s always something to do on the farm. And then we go to church at Canaan Baptist right in front of Chestatee High School. It’s just a small church, but it’s family. Me and Zach grew up in that church.”

Q: Please tell us a little bit about your background in baking. 

A: “I started baking in 2020 right before the pandemic hit. The prime reason for baking was because my parents’ house had burned down, so they started living with us and at that time they were really discouraged. They were really just down and out about everything that happened. They lost all their memories, all their photo album, it’s something that people don’t think about, you’re thinking about clothes, food, but they lost all of their old Christmas decorations, the ones that we handmade, their whole history of their life that they built; it was tragic. But my dad had expressed that he wanted banana bread, that’s his favorite. I just took it on myself, I said, I’m going to make him a homemade banana bread and when I made it, he was so just filled with joy and he was like, ‘this is the best banana bread I’ve ever had.’ After seeing how much it lifted him up, that was when I really found a passion for baking. I’d never really dove into it before then. I’d always liked food and liked baking and I watched the Food Network channel, but it was never something that I thought would be my career. I could see the difference that it could make beyond money, beyond it just being a cake at a birthday party, it changed his whole day, his whole dynamic of the day– so that’s where my passions came from.”

Q: Tell us a little bit about the owners of Puzzle Piece.

A: “Matt Khan, he’s one of the owners… it’s him and his wife. They originated from California, they’ve been in Gainesville about 15 years. Their son is autistic, he’s 15 and they started looking forward to his future and what his future was going to be like. They saw that there weren’t a lot of opportunities for special needs adults, there was a huge gap in employment. Somewhere between 50 to 75% of special needs adults are unemployed, which is insane. A lot of work places don’t want to work with their benefits, they need their social security to survive, so if you don’t work around their benefits, then they can’t work because they need that.
“The main focus is they want their son to have an opportunity when he gets of age but also to help other families in our community.”

Q: Tell us a couple of the things that you’re going to be offering at Puzzle Piece.

A: “We’re going to have breakfast and lunch. We’ll have a breakfast combo and then croissant sandwiches, egg, bacon, cheese in the morning. And then lunch, we’ll have croissant sandwiches. We plan to do a kind of salad, but it’s not set in stone yet but we do plan to incorporate that into the menu. Then we’ll have a lunch combo, we’ll also offer chicken salad. And then as far as pastries go, we’ll have cupcakes, cookies and brownies. We’ll also do croissants as a huge staple and jumbo butter croissants. We bake them fresh here. I’m confident to say there’s not another croissant like it in Gainesville.
“Another option that we’re going to have is we’re going to do glazed croissants, think Krispy Kreme glaze on a fresh baked croissant. We’ll have ice cream. We’ll have a topping bar basically, so they can do two scoops of ice cream and a variety of toppings. We plan to incorporate shakes eventually.”

Q: What are some of your favorite restaurants in our community? 

A: “We recently tried Cotto Modern Italian for my birthday. I’m a huge Italian fan, like the Olive Garden in town, I actually worked there for five years. And you can ask anyone who works in a restaurant, if you work somewhere for so long after you stop working there, you never want to eat there again but that’s not the case with Olive Garden. I could eat an Olive Garden breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the rest of my life. But Cotto Modern Italian won me over. They’re so good. I had the lamb and I also tried the gnocchi, just out of this world, that’s been one of my favorites. I love their concept…For breakfast options, nostalgic wise, I’ve always been a really big fan of the Biscuit Barn. I knew the owner, I worked for her as well, so I guess I’m drawn to where I’ve worked. I loved the environment and I loved the people. And everywhere that I’ve worked has felt kind of family so I’ve made those connections.”

Q: What is something on your bucket list?

A: “One that I’ve always said was, one day I will go to Italy and I will find the most authentic Italian grandmother and just invite myself to her house and just watch her make pasta all day long. Me and pasta are like best friends.”

Q: If you could travel anywhere in the world right now, where would it be? 

A: “I would go to Italy.”

Q: Where do you see yourself in five to 10 years? 

A: “Hopefully in the next five to 10 years, we will have a second location, maybe even a third, depending on how the community takes to us. And hopefully I see myself having another child and just growing in my church and getting closer to God.”

Q: What was the first movie you saw in the theater? 

A: “The first one that I can remember is the very first ‘Twilight.’ I think we saw more before that, but that was such a big deal, I’m not a reader. I hate reading, my older sister is a reader, she loves to read so she read like the entire Twilight saga in 24 hours and she just loves it. And she told mom that I can’t see this movie if I don’t read the book first. So, I had to read the first book to go see it; I think that’s why it sticks in my mind so much is because I had to read the book. I only read a quarter of it, I think.”

Q: What are some of your favorite bands or musicians?

A: “I listened to a lot of  Bluegrass Gospel so I really like the Rochesters. I do really enjoy listening to some of the singers at my church. They’re not really bands, but that’s just where my heart kind of travels, we have a girls group, and I just love to sing with them and like to hear them sing.”

Q: What do you love most about what you do? 

A: “I love the feeling I get when someone loves their product. When someone gets a cake or someone goes to an event and sees one of my cakes and they’re like, ‘Brittany, this is beautiful, this is everything that I wanted.’ Just knowing that that’s one thing that they don’t have to stress about anymore with their events, especially like the weddings. I love being able to make someone feel taken care of and I feel like baking and cooking in general does that. You go home and you cook for your husband and you make his plate and you set it down and he’s taken care of.”

Q: What’s one of your favorite things about Hall County? 

A: “Through this project, I have experienced so much community support. It’s been wild, the amount of people that have come in, not for any kind of gain but just to say, ‘I appreciate so much what you’re doing and we’re going to support you.’”