Reality-show contestant offers sweet treats at Sherrill bakery

SHERRILL, N.Y. — Andrea Maranville’s self-taught skills as a baker have taken her from her house’s kitchen across the Atlantic to compete on a television baking competition and back home to Sherrill to open her own bakery.

Maranville opened Sweet Life of a Baker at 522 Sherrill Road last October, but the road there was a winding one.

In 2018, Maranville was looking to rent some commercial kitchen space to start selling her baked creations when she also decided to apply to be on “The Great American Baking Show – Holiday Edition.” The show selected her as a contestant, which required Maranville to spend a month in London and put her rented kitchen-space search on the back burner.

After ending the show as one of the three finalists and with an autograph from competition judge and her baking icon Sherry Yard, Maranville returned home and resumed her search for some kitchen space. And throughout all that time, she blogged about her baking on her Sweet Life of a Baker blog.

In February 2019, Maranville found kitchen space to lease at the Oneida Community Mansion.

“I just had a dream and a vision,” she says. Maranville didn’t have any customers to start, but started holding monthly pop-up events at the Mansion, developing some wholesale accounts along the way. She also started growing her customer base for specialty orders and branded her business the Silver City Baking Company.

In the summer of 2020, she closed the bakery for the season and headed to Bolton Landing, where she worked as a pastry chef for a restaurant featured on yet another television show. This time it was “Summer Rush” on the Food Network.

Right around that time, the COVID-19 pandemic got into full swing, so Maranville kept her Silver City Baking Company closed to the public that fall. “I started really focusing on online orders,” she says, as well as locally delivered and wholesale orders.

In March 2021, the space at 522 Sherrill Road, once home to a coffee shop, became available, and Maranville felt the time was right to set up shop. “We saw the opportunity here as a location,” she says. The street is busy and gets lots of foot traffic.

“The response from our community and surrounding communities has just been overwhelmingly supportive,” she says of the venture.

Rather than stick with the Silver City name, Maranville opted to name the shop after her blog, for which she already had a loyal fan and customer base. She also had Facebook and Instagram pages already in place using the Sweet Life name.

The menu at Sweet Life of a Baker isn’t huge, but “everything I have in here is because I love it,” Maranville says. Breakfast items include scones, muffins, cinnamon rolls, yogurt, and granola, while lunch offerings include soup and sandwiches. The bakery also ships cookie and brownie platters and offers an array of custom cakes.

Currently, Maranville employs a baker’s assistant and has five part-time employees to help out.

Her future plans could include multiple locations and lots of other ideas. “I’ve got big, big, big goals,” she says, adding that she may be a dreamer, but she’s also a doer.

“I’ve been drafting a cookbook for about 10 years,” Maranville says, so she’d like to get that published. She’d also like to continue to have a television and online presence. Maranville currently holds Zoom baking classes.

In the end, whatever she ends up doing will center around sharing her love of food. “I just want people to come in here, enjoy their food, enjoy their time with each other, and walk away happy,” Maranville says.

Sweet Life of a Baker is open Wednesday through Saturday from 8 a.m.-4 p.m.