(Sarah A. Miller/Tyler Morning Telegraph)

Imagine that “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” was really about a baker who made the most fantastic pastries. Think about how wonderful it would be to enter the “factory” and encounter a world of cookies that sparkle from sugar crystals, playful gingerbread boys and girls and pies oozing with fillings.

Walking into the Village Bakery in Tyler is like that.

On a fall day, a steady stream of customers looked at the selections in a wooden display case that runs almost the entire length of the shop.

“I’ll take a half a dozen of those,” said one man pointing to a tray of sugar cookies.

A woman came in and picked up a specialty cake for a family celebration.

Another customer asked about a stack of gingerbread cookies on a shelf behind the display case.

“We are famous for those,” Bettie Smith, the owner, says of the gingerbread cookies. “Most of the year we sell about 500 week but beginning the week of Thanksgiving we sell as many as 950 a day.”

When Miss Bettie, as she is affectionately known by her friends and customers, bought the bakery in 1981, it only sold gingerbread men. “I said, ‘What, no girls. I added the girls.”

Village bakery, one of the longest retail businesses in Tyler continuously operating out of the same location, opened in October 1948 in the Bergfeld Center.

According to a historical marker, Bergfeld Center was the first suburban shopping center in Tyler. Until then, retailers were concentrated on and near the downtown square. A land developer created the center to serve the growing residential neighborhoods expanding south of downtown.

The shop originally was owned by Emmett and Margaret Tidd. When Mr. Tidd decided to return to the Navy and serve in the Korean War a few years later, the Tidds sold it to John and Nadine Self. They Selfs owned the bakery for nearly 30 years before retiring.

Miss Bettie has been baking since she was a child. As an adult, she made treats that were big hits at events she attended in Alexandria, Louisiana, where she and her first husband were living in the early 1980s.

A friend told her that Village Bakery was for sale. After learning the bakery had an impeccable reputation, they moved to Tyler and she took over the business.

“One of the first things, I did was add an Italian cream cake,” Miss Bettie says. “We still use it today.”

Village Bakery celebrated its 70th anniversary in October. Miss Bettie says the bakery has thrived these many years because of loyal customers and an unwavering insistence on excellence.

“Everything has to be perfect or it doesn’t go out. I go on all the deliveries (of cakes) to make sure everything is perfect. We only have one shot to make it right for a couple having a wedding.”

Besides the gingerbread cookies and custom wedding cakes, the bakery is known for colorful Easter egg-shaped petit fours.

During the weeks leading to Easter, the bakery sells tens of thousands of the moist pound cakes dipped in a sugary glaze and topped with decorations made from butter cream icing.

Over the years, several members of Miss Bettie’s family and longtime employees have helped her keep the bakery putting out those tasty petit fours and the many other treats that customers can’t get enough of.

Miss Bettie becomes emotional when she talks about how the bakery has been a happy part of many people’s lives.

“What gets to me the most are the people who who come in and share how they have been coming here since they were children and how much the bakery still means to them after all these year. They all have special memories and they all tell us, ‘We just love your bakery.’ That means a lot to us.”