The Lights Are On Again at 15 Haddon Avenue, and the Whole Town Can Smell It

There is a specific kind of grief that comes with losing a bakery. It’s not just the cookies. It’s the woman who knew your grandmother’s order, the case you pressed your nose against as a kid, the pink box that meant somebody was celebrating something. When McMillan’s Bakery closed in May 2025 after 86 years on Haddon Avenue, Westmont didn’t just lose a business. It lost a landmark you could taste.

So walk with me into 15 Haddon Ave. today, because the lights are back on, and the smell — that warm, yeasty, powdered-sugar smell that a shuttered building loses within a week — is back too.

A new name on a familiar door

The address now belongs to Del Buono’s Pastries, and if that name makes you sit up in South Jersey, it should. Del Buono’s Bakery and the connected Carmen’s Deli have long earned their reputation the honest way, one loaf and one tray at a time. Owner Tom Whitman bought the old McMillan’s building, gutted it, and rebuilt it into something bigger — a significantly larger retail floor up front and a serious upgrade in the kitchen out back, the kind of production space that tells you he’s planning to feed this town for a long while. The grand opening was Saturday, Aug. 29, and the soft-open days before it had regulars lining up to see whether the magic survived the transfer.

Here’s the detail that got me, the one that turns a real estate transaction into a story worth telling. Doug Biemiller — grandson of the family that founded McMillan’s, a baker in his own right — is back inside that building. Not as a nostalgic visitor. As a Del Buono’s employee, hands in the dough, working the same ovens in the same spot his family worked for the better part of a century. Whitman didn’t have to do that. He could have opened a shiny new shop and let the old name fade. Instead he brought the bloodline home.

That choice matters, and you can taste the philosophy in it. This is a man who understands that a bakery in a walking town isn’t a brand you slap on a storefront. It’s a relationship. It’s the guy behind the counter knowing the difference between a Tuesday and a birthday. Bringing Biemiller back is Whitman quietly telling Haddon Township: I know what this place was to you, and I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t.

What’s in the case

The case itself is doing plenty of talking. Alongside Del Buono’s own donuts and traditional Italian specialties, there are creations from DiBartolo’s Kakery on site — a smart little collaboration that widens the range without watering down anyone’s identity. And yes, there’s coffee, because a bakery without a place to stand and gossip over a cup is just a drive-through with better lighting.

I’ll be honest with you the way I always am: replacing an 86-year-old institution is a nearly impossible assignment, and time will tell whether Del Buono’s earns the same devotion McMillan’s spent generations building. Loyalty in this business is not transferred with a deed. It’s re-earned, one perfect crumb cake at a time. But everything I’m seeing — the bigger kitchen, the grandson at the bench, the pink-box reverence for what came before — says Whitman understands the assignment.

Loyalty in this business is not transferred with a deed.Sophia Marino

Near the PATCO line, in the heart of a town that walks to its errands, the ovens at 15 Haddon Ave. are hot again. Go stand in front of the case. Press your nose to the glass if you have to. Some things are worth mourning, and some are worth celebrating, and every so often, in a town that loves its bakery, you get to do both in the same breath.

Based on reporting from 42 Freeway, Haddonfield Patch, CBS Philadelphia, Yahoo News and South Jersey Food Scene.