Tired of long commutes, patisserie owners Jörg and Esther Rudolph have left the West End.

A month ago, the couple sold the Dockyard Pastry Shop, known for its European pastries and cakes, and this week opened a second location in Hamilton.

They already have an outlet on Burnaby Street in Hamilton.

“We are now where the old Greg’s Steakhouse used to be on the corner of Church and Parliament Street,” Mrs Rudolph said. “Our cash register is where the old bar was for the restaurant. We are leasing the space from Salon Visage.”

The new place is The Hamilton Pastry Shop, Church Street branch, and the other is still called The Hamilton Pastry Shop.

The couple miss their Sandys customers, but not the long ride from Sandys to Hamilton.

“We were travelling the route sometimes twice a day to stock up the shop in Hamilton,” Mrs Rudolph said. “I used to listen to a lot of books on tape,” her husband said.

They started looking for another space in Hamilton several years ago to no avail. “There was really nothing accommodating,” she said.

They learnt about the kitchen on Church Street a year ago when The Royal Gazette wrote about the new Salon Visage beauty shop there. In the article Salon Visage co-owner Catarina DeCouto said they were looking to lease out kitchen space attached to the salon.

Now the Rudolphs are enjoying the relative bustle of the City.

“It usually gets really quiet at this time of year in Dockyard,” Mrs Rudolph said. “We would normally close up and travel for a couple of weeks.”

It was raining hard when The Royal Gazette spoke to the entrepreneurs.

“Weather like this is good for us,” Mrs Rudolph said. “People are ducking in to get out of the rain.”

They opened Dockyard Pastry in 2012, and the Burnaby Street location six years later.

The Rudolphs love their new kitchen, which is twice as big as their old one.

“Now we make everything in the City and we fill up the shop on Burnaby Street from here,” Mrs Rudolph said.

There is an inside door between The Hamilton Pastry Shop, Church Street, and Salon Visage, so customers getting their hair and nails done can pop over and get a coffee or something to eat without going outdoors.

“It is a really nice combination,” Mrs Rudolph said. “We are seeing brand-new customers and also people who knew us from Dockyard.”

For the first time they have a full breakfast menu.

“We have everything from egg sandwiches to pancakes,” she said.

For lunch their avocado sandwich and crispy chicken sandwich are proving to be popular.

“We also want to do a monthly sandwich combo,” Mrs Rudolph said. “We will do a soup and sandwich or a salad and a sandwich.”

They change their soups all the time, and have vegetarian options on the menu. The real draw, however, are the cookies and pastries.

“We get a lot of people coming in from the nearby offices,” Mr Rudolph said. “They buy something sweet and take it back to their desks.”

Like many local businesses they have been impacted by rising food prices.

“You always have to keep in mind that prices don’t go down, they go up,” Mr Rudolph said. “However, prices for our menu have stayed pretty much the same for the last year.”

Mrs Rudolph said just because prices were going up did not mean they had to overcharge people.

“There is always a way around things to make them more affordable, fresh and good to eat,” she said.

They usually sell out of everything by the end of the day so they do not have a lot of waste.

“If there is no more of something, there is no more for the day,” Mrs Rudolph said.

People keep asking them why they do not expand to St George’s. For now they want to keep things more central.

Mr Rudolph said that their old place in Dockyard will become a coffee shop similar to what it was when they owned it.

“That place was like our baby,” Mrs Rudolph said.