Business & Tech

Norwood's Common Cafe & Patisserie All About Baking

Owner Maria Avramidis shares the story of how she broke away from the corporate dining world and carved a niche in Norwood.

Maria Avramidis started working for herself about 13 years ago when she broke away from the corporate restaurant scene. She said it was the best decision she ever made.

“I have a passion for food and service for people, and although it’s a lot of work this is what we love to do,” she said.

Avramidis said she works with her son Paul at The Common Cafe & Patisserie in Norwood. She said it would have been tough starting out without him.

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“He’s definitely a very important part of the business,” she said.

Avramidis said she originally started out in Wellesley, but said they decided to move about six years ago to come closer to home.

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“We love the town so much, although I do live in Walpole,” she said. “This town is a very good business-oriented town. We’ve never had any problems with Norwood and the people are so friendly.”

Avramidis said right off the bat they started building regular relationships with customers in Norwood.

“We have our regulars in almost everyday for the past six years,” she said. “We get to know each other really well.”

The Commons serves breakfast and lunch, and does catering for events when people need it. They also bake their own pastries to order.

“We love it here, it’s a lot of work but we try to do everything at the store,” she said. “We bake everything here every morning.” We make all our own stuff, and we do homemade cookies and you can always order a cake for any occasion.”

Avramidis said she started cooing at a very young age.

“I can’t even remember,” she said. “I was also a housewife and homemaker before I started working, and I always cooked. I gathered ideas, and now I see what people want and we try to accommodate.”

She added she loves to experiment, and will try anything a customer wants, but won’t hesitate to speak her mind if she thinks something doesn’t work.

“If someone wants a cake with strawberries and red icing, well that doesn’t look too nice and we try to tell them not to do it,” she said. “We do work with customers when they have events and we try to do anything even if it’s not on the menu. We try to accommodate them if it’s something we can do. For the most part, they like what we have here and that’s why they come back.”

Avramidis said they now have taken over the Café at the Boch Toyota store on Route 1 for the past three months, and she said it’s been quite an experience.

“We’ve had a good relationship with them,” she said. “We try to offer the same service and food to them as well and so far it’s been going really well.”

Avramidis said they donate a lot to the Norwood Fire and Police organizations.

“We do a lot of that stuff locally,” she said. “We also donate in Walpole to the police department and the schools around the area. We have customers from the schools regularly, so we try to support them as much as we can when they have fundraisers or something special. They can rely on us.”


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