A bakery grows in Detroit: when a lesbian couple opened a bakery in a blighted Motor City neighborhood 11 years ago, they prospered--and so did their customers, employees, and the local economy.

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JACKIE VICTOR REMEMBERS the first two customers to show up when she and her business and life partner, Ann Perrault, opened their Avalon International Breads shop 11 years ago in Detroit: Thomas Gumbleton, a now-retired Catholic bishop, and "Larry the homeless guy, who still lives in front of the bakery. It was our first blessing."

The memory goes a long way toward capturing the bakery's relationship with its Cass Corridor neighborhood. Once synonymous with the urban blight so inextricably associated with Detroit, the corridor is now enjoying a revitalization that owes no small debt to the Avalon, which has made service to the community part of its mission since before it opened its doors. The bakery is not just a place to buy a loaf of sourdough, says Victor, but "an oasis of healing and compassion."

If that description sounds far-fetched, in practice Avalon is achieving something like it. Founded according to ideals influenced by Buddhist principles, political activism, and a simple love of food, the bakery is a place where profit--it made $1.5 million last year in gross sales--shares priority with what Perrauk calls their bottom line: "the right relationships with the earth, our community, our employees, and our checkbook."

Those carefully cultivated ties have served the business and its neighbors well. Later this year the Avalon will move around the corner into a new space three times the size of its current home, complete with a pastry kitchen and expanded menu. The bakery's growth reflects that of Cass Corridor, which in the past few years has seen an increase in locally owned new businesses--and residents to patronize them.

In the early 1990s, when Victor and Perrault got together, they didn't envision a future replete with organic flour and peanut butter brownies. Raised in the Detroit suburbs, both were deeply committed activists Perrault, who had followed well-known activists Grace and Jimmy Boggs to the city, was running the Detroit Women's Coffeehouse when Victor began envisioning a bakery that would be an "outward manifestation of [our] inward ideals about what life could be like in the city." With Perrault's encouragement, Victor began researching her idea, and the two began a baking apprenticeship.

After taking a business seminar with Buddhist teacher Geri Larkin ("our first and last business consultant," Victor says), the couple opened Avalon with the intention of wholesaling only. Their neighbors, however, had different ideas. "People started to buy bread before we even knew how to make it," Perrault remembers. "We didn't know anything," Victor says. "We weren't bakers or business owners--we were radicals."

They learned quickly on the job and with the help of their customers, who provided feedback and suggestions along with an appreciation for quality products. From day one the women knew that decent wages and employee benefits were a crucial part of their business plan, and within a year they were able to offer health insurance. According to Soh Suzuki, one of the bakery's employees, the perks have helped attract workers "from a very interesting demographic background." Although the bakery tries to hire people in the neighborhood, many artists and even some multiple-degree holders have come to work there too.

While Victor and Perrault view this diversity as one of the bakery's greatest assets, it's also proven to be one of their greatest challenges. "People talk about diversity all the time, but to work here is to experience it--it's race, sexual orientation, gender, economic class," says Victor. "We're starting to realize that paying a fair wage is only the beginning. You can learn how to make good bread and to market it, but human resources is like an abstract, esoteric art."

Another challenge? Balancing their work and personal lives. The ladies ran the bakery together for its first seven years, but when Victor became pregnant with their second child in 2004, they decided she would spend the next three years at home to focus on the children while Perrauk would tend to the bakery. They switched roles this year, and though Victor jokes that "we don't really have a personal life," it's clear the couple has made the arrangement work for them. "She's taking on the stress of 30 employees," Perrault says of Victor. But, Victor says of Perrault, "she's still cooking dinner every night!"