Now you don't have to drive to Corsicana for holiday treat

Fort Worth Star-Telegram
December 14,2005

HILLSBORO -- It sits unobtrusively in the corner of the massive outlet mall, just east of Interstate 35. There's a bridal shop on one side, a clothing store on the other. It seems small by comparison.

But the Collin Street Bakery satellite store is an island paradise to many Hillsboro-area shoppers. This is the first time the famous Corsicana bakery has offered its DeLuxe Fruitcakes for sale outside its home base, and for shoppers in Fort Worth, Waco and Hillsboro, this store is much closer and more accessible.

The store in the Prime Outlets Mall is an experiment for Collin Street. This time of year the bakery is in full swing, jumping from a normal work force of 80 or so to nearly 700.

It seems almost impossible, but Collin Street is baking and shipping an estimated 30,000 fruitcakes a day -- that's a day -- from Corsicana.

Wanda Long, who helps run the Hillsboro store, has worked for the bakery for eight years and attests to the Christmas explosion. "Believe me, I've worked on the line, putting pecans on top of the cakes," she said. "I know they run about 30,000 a day."

Now Long works in retail. She and a few others travel the 40 miles daily from Corsicana to Hillsboro to operate the satellite store. Local residents work in the Hillsboro store as well.

The idea, of course, is to make the Collin Street product more accessible to the public. "If you went to the Corsicana store, you'd see why they needed to try something else," Long said. "It is just a sea of people there, and you get swept along."

I visited the Hillsboro store about 11 Monday morning. It was quiet; a handful of customers came while I was there. They studied the fruitcakes and thought about the alternatives -- pecan pineapple cake, pecan apricot and pecan apple and cinnamon. They made their purchases and were gone in minutes.

An hour later I was in Corsicana. A Navarro County sheriff's deputy directed traffic outside the bakery; another stood guard inside where shoppers were elbow to elbow.

The Collin Street Bakery is a tourist attraction in Corsicana. It has a visitors lounge, coffee and, best of all, free samples. This place goes well beyond the famous DeLuxe Fruitcake. The shelves are packed with latticed fruit pies, frosted pastries, bread and cookies of all kinds. There are indescribable cheesecakes. The Corsicana store is a full-scale bakery where the fruitcakes take only the center isle.

This is fruitcake lovers' home base. The bakery is known as one of the highest-volume fruitcake producers in the world, selling around 2 million a year. I tried to get smeone at the bakery to call me back with the latest figures, but I was told that at this time of year, everyone is too busy.

A Star-Telegram story says the bakery makes so much fruitcake that it owns pineapple and papaya farms in Costa Rica and a pecan-shelling facility in Texas.

The story goes on to say that the bakery sells its fruitcake in 197 countries and that fruitcake slices are included in U.S. military rations.

"This is our first expansion ever," bake-shop manager Deanna Cryer said of the Hillsboro store. She told the Waco Tribune-Herald, "We wanted to give I-35 a shot and see how we would do in an outlet-mall environment."

The mall location might still be in question, but Collin Street workers say the idea of operating a satellite store in Hillsboro is a good one. Also, construction has begun on a new retail shop on Interstate 45 in Corsicana.

Those "alternative" shopping sites are for convenience, but the Collin Street Web site still invites customers to the original bakery. "If indeed you're ever 50 miles south of Dallas on Interstate 45, please plan to visit historic Corsicana and our 106 year old bakery," the site says. "There are always free samples and 10 cent coffee 7 days a week."