Fresh Pastries and Creative Lattes in Waterbury? Find Them at Black Cap Coffee & Bakery. 

Looking for the perfect almond croissant to go with your cappuccino or maple latte? Black Cap Coffee & Bakery has you covered, with locations in Burlington, Stowe, Morrisville and — as of this past November — Waterbury. Housed in the historic downtown train station, Black Cap’s new Waterbury café offers more than just scrumptious pastries, creative lattes, and flavorful breakfast and lunch sandwiches; customers can also get a peek at the bakery team helping to fuel Black Cap’s success, working in the eatery’s open kitchen.

Its staff of 16 — lead by 25-year-old New England Culinary Institute-trained head baker Ashia Messier — turns fresh, locally sourced ingredients into the enticing array of treats available at all of Black Cap’s locations. Customers have noticed.

“People, they have the best baker in the northeast,” gushed one recent reviewer on Google, who visited the Burlington café. “It's like walking into that first room at the Wonka Factory: slightly overwhelming in a good way as you take in all of the delicious options around you.”

Black Cap’s Waterbury addition ups the wow factor. For years, the beautifully renovated train station, built in 1875, housed the flagship café for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, which closed at the beginning of the pandemic. Black Cap owner Laura Vilalta had been hoping to find a space for her bakery in Waterbury — the town is conveniently located between Burlington and Montpelier, and near the Mad River Valley — and she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to occupy the train station. “I just loved it,” she says.
Once Black Cap opened, just after Thanksgiving, word got around quickly. Vilalta reports that the place was instantly busy despite a very minimal marketing effort.

Step inside and you’ll understand why: The mouthwatering scents of fresh pastries, maple sugar and melted chocolate greet you at the door. The pastry cabinet will be familiar to Black Cap fans. On a recent January morning, it was stocked with orange zest morning buns, pecan coffee cake, orange-cranberry scones and an abundance of flaky croissants — butter, almond cream, chocolate, maple, chocolate hazelnut, ham and cheddar, spinach and feta.

Fancy something sweet? Check out the dessert display, which features chocolate-dipped cannoli, fresh berry and espresso mascarpone tarts, and coconut mango chia seed pudding. Gluten-free options include peanut butter energy bites, blueberry-cashew cheesecake, and date-and-nut rolls that are also vegan.
Black Cap also sells standard coffee shop fare — think cinnamon buns, muffins and brownies. But Vilalta notes that “morning buns, croissants, the tarts and the cakes — that is where we shine.”

That wasn’t always the case. The business was originally known simply as Black Cap Coffee and had a single location, in Stowe. Vilalta, who lives there, bought Black Cap in 2012 and partnered with general manager Danielle Dolisie to add a distinctive breakfast and lunch menu, with sandwiches such as the Sophia Loren — Black Cap’s take on the traditional mozzarella, basil and tomato Caprese — and espresso drinks such as the Snickers latte, a blend of mocha, hazelnut and caramel.
The bakery part of the business didn’t take off until Messier took over as head baker four years ago.

Before applying at Black Cap, Messier had been working part time at Harrison’s Restaurant in Stowe while studying at NECI, but the work she got to do was “pretty limited,” she says. She wanted more.

Harrison’s is across the street from Black Cap’s Stowe location, and, in search of a change, Messier took a part-time job there as an assistant baker. The café had a token bakery operation, but Messier saw potential.

And Vilalta saw potential in Messier. “She was very young, but she was very smart,” remembers Vilalta. “It was clear very quickly that she was the person we had to have in charge.”

After Vilalta promoted Messier to head baker, Messier quickly stopped using premade dough and started making everything by hand. Demand for baked goods spiked. So Messier urged Vilalta to invest in a dough sheeter that tripled the number of croissants they could make in a single batch.

Today, Black Cap’s Waterbury customers can watch the bakery staff pull handmade dough through the sheeter and expertly layer it to produce its signature croissants.

When Vilalta nudged Messier to add some color to the dessert case, the baker eagerly took up the challenge. “I go for natural color,” she says. “I’m not a big fan of using food dyes, so I think about what fruits or produce I can put in that case. I always push to make products that don’t just taste good but look good, too.”
A hard worker who grew up in the Stowe area, Messier arrives at the bakery sometimes as early as 3 a.m. to oversee production and ensure that all Black Cap’s locations get deliveries of fresh pastries by the time they open their doors at 7 or 8 a.m.

Vilalta has been thrilled with the results — so much so that in 2021 she changed the name of the women-owned and -run business to Black Cap Coffee & Bakery.

The demand for Black Cap’s baked goods validated that change. According to one customer review on Google, “Black Cap’s pastries will complete your day.”

Writes another: “Amazing. Just superlative pastries. And all of the other entries in the thesaurus for "incredible." … Every bite was a marvel of flavor and texture and crispy auditory pleasure.”

But don’t just take their word for it — drop in to one of Black Cap’s four locations to sample a croissant. Vilalta is confident the pastries will speak for themselves.

Black Cap Coffee & Bakery Locations

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• Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

BURLINGTON

42 Church St.
Burlington, VT 05401
802-540-1744

STOWE

144 Main St.
Stowe, VT 05672
802-253-2123

MORRISVILLE

53 Lower Main St.
Morristown, VT 05661
802-521-7197

WATERBURY TRAIN STATION

1 Rotarian Place
Waterbury, VT 05676
802-560-7913

This article was commissioned and paid for by Black Cap Coffee & Bakery.