Kate Nycz, owner and head baker of North South Baking Co., loves interacting with farmers and customers at farmers markets every week  

Kate Nycz, owner and head baker of North South Baking Company, loves heading to Hyde Park Farmers’ Market every week and connecting with the community of farmers she has built over her time there. She always carves out time to catch up with friends and enjoy their produce.  

“I love building relationships with people, and especially like mutually beneficial ones with farmers,” she says. “So I’ve been working and sourcing from a lot of the same farmers hyper locally through these markets for the last nine years.” 

Nycz says she started out her baking journey working at bakeries as the head baker. She also ran a bakery with a wood fire brick oven where she learned she loved the process of fermentation, specifically with sourdough. After spending time managing and creating recipes for them, she realized she wanted to have more control over her culinary journey. She decided to leave the bakery and took a road trip to meet up with baker friends in Michigan, North Carolina and Ohio. 

She traveled through Cincinnati in February 2017 and has been based in the area ever since. She says she saw a market for bakeries and the types of baked goods she was hoping to introduce and jumped at the chance.  

“Cincinnati is such a food city,” Nycz says. “I saw that nine years ago, and then I had some work lined up as a baker and in the area, and I just kind of pulled the trigger and was like, ‘Well, I think this is what I’m gonna do.’” 

Nycz started out small in the Cincinnati area, first baking out of a house under cottage food law to now owning a brick-and-mortar bakery in the Covington area. She is also planning to move the bakery to an all-day cafe and expand the menu. She says she does wholesale five days a week out of her bakery and still always tries to attend the farmers markets because of the community she has made.  

“The OG customers know me because I’ve worked market the whole time and I love markets,” she says. “People at the bakery may not know me all the time. But then at market, customers know me and of course, the farmers.”  

These relationships with farmers at the market have aligned with Nycz’s love and appreciation for using local ingredients in her baking. She says she receives 90 dozen eggs from the Eaton Farm each week because of the connections she has made. Some farmers give her produce because they do not want it to go to waste and she sometimes ends up with cauliflower or peaches she can use in her baked goods.  

Nycz says the farmers markets can sometimes strain her energy and time, but she loves going and interacting with the community and even attends when she is not scheduled to work the bakery stand.  

“I want to see the farmers and what they have and talk to them about what they’re growing,” Nycz says. “It’s the connection of keeping your money in your local economy. Some of my money doesn’t leave that market, it’s great. You need to keep your money in your local economy and support your local farmers. It’s so important.”