Wilson Avenue meets Broadway in Uptown, a few blocks east of the Baker & Nosh storefront. Photo: Warren LeMay from Chicago, IL, United States / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Bill Millholland came to baking the long way around. Before he opened Baker & Nosh on Wilson Avenue, he worked in television, went to culinary school, and spent time teaching other students in both Italy and the United States. When he moved to Chicago, he quit his job to build a shop of his own.
His partner, Terry Groff, was not sold right away. Groff has said he spent days trying to talk Millholland out of the idea when it first came up, about three years before this spring. The two eventually settled on a simple rule: keep going until they hit a problem they could not get past. They never found one.
Money first, then a name
The hardest part of getting started was raising enough capital to pay for construction and permits. The pair pulled money together from several sources before they could begin. Picking a name turned out to be the slowest step of the whole process. Millholland’s sister finally suggested Baker & Nosh, and it stuck.
They found the storefront at 1303 W. Wilson Ave. by driving around the neighborhood. The French doors and the garden out back closed the deal.
The menu leans Italian and French, with American standbys mixed in. Millholland grills steak sandwiches every Thursday, a habit that goes back to his childhood. The shop’s approach is plain: good ingredients, made fresh, without fuss.
Learning to read the weather
The first year taught them how hard it is to guess daily demand. Baker & Nosh is not part of a chain, and the owners have no deep reserves to absorb waste, so they try to match each day’s baking to what customers will buy. That turns out to depend heavily on the forecast, which they check constantly. By the second year they were better prepared for holidays and busy weekends, though both men say the target keeps moving.
The bakery has also become a reference point for other small businesses on the street. Florist Janessa Knodt, who later opened Forget Me Knodt a few doors down at 1313 W. Wilson, was a regular for coffee and watched the place stay packed before she signed her own lease. Actor David Dastmalchian also shot scenes for his film “Animals” inside the shop.
For two owners who started with a hunch and a short list of rules, the storefront on Wilson has become a fixture of the block.
Linh Tran-Whitaker covers Argyle Street, dining and community life.
