A Seattle bakery, Mina Bake Shop, fell victim to a burglary before it could even open its doors to customers, with thieves making away with roughly $30,000 worth of new equipment. Owned by Vietnamese sisters Nancy and Hannah Phan, the bake shop in Fremont was set to debut its first brick-and-mortar location after its inception as a pop-up in 2022, with dreams of working together brought to a cruel halt.
Last Thursday morning the fledgling business suffered a significant setback when Nancy Phan received a distressing phone call from her general contractor questioning the whereabouts of the espresso machine, leading to a horrendous discovery, according to KING5. The inventory pilfered included a white Synesso S200 espresso machine bearing serial number 904230016, a white Mahlkonig E80S espresso grinder, a 20-quart Globe SP20 stand mixer and three six-quart KitchenAid stand mixers, along with cameras and a speaker system, described in detail by the distraught owners.
The Seattle Police Department is investigating this pre-opening day theft with the suspected criminals caught on camera forcibly entering via the back door, and then presumably unlocking the front to facilitate their crime. "It's hard enough running a small business without being burglarized," Nancy Phan lamented in her interview with FOX13 Seattle, emphasizing the moral decay in feeling that such acts can go unpunished.
The Phan sisters are now grappling with the ramifications of this setback, their aspiration to work hand in hand in a space of their own creation violently uprooted; though the equipment can eventually be replaced, the sisters' sense of security and anticipation for their enterprise has been deeply shaken, "We started as an emerging company in 2022 with the desire to do something with our own hands and to work together," Nancy Phan recollected in an interview provided by US Times Post, yet now they're left to piece together their dream in the aftermath of a callous crime.
