In its last months, Belleville's Forest Avenue shop sold pastry three hours a week on each weekend day, from 8 to 11 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. The new tenant at 767 Forest Avenue posts five-hour weekend mornings, 7 a.m. to noon. The gap is two hours. The pattern is the same. This building has always baked first and sold second, and the bakery that just moved in, Bread & Friends, is keeping it that way.
For Woodfords Corner, that sets what the corner gets this winter. It's a weekend bakery window attached to a production kitchen, and it is not yet a daily café. The building's history explains why.
A bakehouse first, by design
In August 2021, Portland Food Map reported that Belleville had leased 767 Forest Ave to build a production bakery. The move would nearly quadruple its production space, with a rotating rack oven and proofing equipment on order. At the time, the shop at the corner of North and Congress Streets on Munjoy Hill stayed the retail counter. A second retail spot at the Forest Avenue bakery was floated as a possibility for late 2022 or 2023.
That second counter opened in 2023. The retail was added to a building whose main job was feeding a shop across town.
| Year | 767 Forest Avenue | 1 North Street, Munjoy Hill |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Not yet in use by Belleville | Belleville opens at North and Congress |
| 2021 | Leased for a production bakery | Remains the retail shop |
| 2023 | Weekend retail window opens | Retail continues |
| June 2026 | Becomes Belleville's only location | Last day of operations June 8 |
| September 2026 | Belleville closes all operations | |
| November 2026 | Bread & Friends pastry production, with a weekend café scheduled from November 14 |
When Munjoy Hill closed, the weekend window stayed
Belleville closed its Munjoy Hill shop this past June. In a statement quoted by Portland Food Map, the owners said they did not have enough trained bakers to keep up their quality standards and enough pastry to run as normal. They also pointed to the overhead of keeping two locations and noted they were nearing the end of their 10-year lease at 1 North St. The Portland Press Herald put the last day of service at Monday, June 8.
That left Forest Avenue as the only Belleville, still open just on weekend mornings. The owners expected to add hours there. Then in late August, the Press Herald reported that owners Chris Deutsch and Amy Fuller planned to close the Forest Avenue location for good in September. They wrote that they were "closing all operations at Belleville." The paper described Belleville as the bakeshop known for its laminated pastries and pizza. The 2021 lease report said the Forest Avenue bakery was meant to meet growing demand for its croissants and pizza.
So at its smallest, Belleville looked like this: a production building with a three-hour weekend window. The next tenant is starting from that same setup.
Bread & Friends moves in through the back door
Portland Food Map reported on November 8 that Bread & Friends has taken over the former Belleville building. It moved pastry production there first and planned a weekend takeout café starting November 14. The order matters. The ovens arrived before the counter did, just as they did for Belleville.
Most Portlanders know Bread & Friends from 505 Fore Street in the Old Port. A double husband-and-wife team runs it: Jess Rattey and Jeremy Broucek, and Maggie and Tanner Rubin. According to the bakery's own history, it started in 2021 as a farmers market bakery making naturally leavened bread, laminated pastry, and jams, pickles, spreads and butters to go with the bread. It opened the Fore Street bakery and restaurant in April 2023, with brunch, dinner, pastries, bread, coffee, and beer and wine. The site also lists the Press Herald's 2026 roundup of the best 32 restaurants in Greater Portland among its recent press.
Bread & Friends describes the Forest Avenue expansion in production terms:
"In November 2026, Bread & Friends expanded to add the Café on Forest Avenue, housed alongside a dedicated pastry production facility and serving the full bread and pastry menus alongside focused coffee offerings."
"Focused" is a fair word for the coffee. The opening menu is bread, pastry, drip and iced coffee, tea and a few other drinks. Renovations planned for next year are meant to add espresso drinks and other items and to extend the hours. Until then, the posted schedule is Saturday and Sunday, 7 a.m. to noon. That opens an hour earlier and closes an hour later than Belleville's last weekend window. It also brings the full Fore Street bread and pastry menus to an off-peninsula corner.
On the posted schedule, the café runs only on Saturday and Sunday mornings. The rest of the week, the building works as a bakery supplying the restaurant downtown, and the renovation schedule will decide when the café's hours change.
A Saturday morning along Forest Avenue
On a weekend morning the café works as an anchor, and a few other Woodfords Corner addresses fit around it:
- Bread & Friends Café, 767 Forest Ave. Posted hours are Saturday and Sunday, 7 a.m. to noon, for takeout bread, pastry and drip coffee.
- Zaitun, 849 Forest Ave. The Bollard reviewed it in October, describing breakfast-through-dinner service in the former Loco Taco space. Hours are 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., Wednesday through Monday, so it covers both weekend days.
- Woodford F&B, 660 Forest Ave. Its OpenTable listing shows a menu that includes Sunday brunch.
- Coveside Coffee, 28 Vannah Ave. The neighborhood association has used it for events, including a spring "Coveside in Bloom" morning with coffee, crepes, plants and local makers, and a Fall Market listed for October 17.
- The Woodfords Club. For the afternoon, the club's public activities page lists recurring public pool, bowling and board-game sessions.
A short walk up the avenue from the bakery, Portland Food Map and the Press Herald have both reported on Culture House, a soul food and Ethiopian restaurant at 683 Forest Ave.
The street outside is next to change
Next year the building may get espresso, and the street out front is due for a redesign. In September, Maine Public reported that city councilors had endorsed a plan to cut Forest Avenue from four lanes to three between Woodford's Corner and the Bedford Street and Baxter Boulevard intersection near the I-295 exit. One of the three lanes becomes a center turn lane. The plan also adds buffered bike lanes and new crosswalks and moves on-street parking to one side of the street. Work is expected to start next summer, in 2027. The city plans to begin with flexible, low-cost materials to test how traffic responds before making final changes.
The neighborhood has already tried a small version of this on its own. In August 2025, Friends of Woodfords Corner volunteers re-striped the faded Grace Street crosswalk and added temporary street art as a traffic-calming demonstration. The same group's October newsletter billed CornerFest 2026 as a block party on Grace Street on Saturday, October 3, with music, activities, food and beer. Its event recap describes live music, a games station and an evening dance party. The newsletter also listed a Woodfords Club spaghetti dinner.
Bread & Friends' renovations are planned for 2027, and the Forest Avenue work is expected to begin that summer. So espresso and longer café hours at 767 Forest Ave could arrive in the same year as the changes to the street outside. Until then, the posted café hours are Saturday and Sunday from 7 a.m. to noon, and the coffee is drip.
Bakery buildings like this one usually keep their purpose from one owner to the next, and that tells you a lot about the street around them. If you're thinking about what Woodfords Corner and the blocks along Forest Avenue will look like after the redesign, Ana T.L. Dierkhising is glad to talk through what she's seeing in Portland. Let's Connect.
