AMHERST, NH-Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door. Bake consistently delicious cakes and they’ll do the same, and keep coming back! Thus has Frederick Lozier of Frederick’s Pastries in Amherst built a successful business and garnered a reputation as one of the state’s premier pastry chefs.

But like many entrepreneurs, the road to his success wasn't paved in a day. Lozier will be the first to tell you it took years of hard work and perseverance. As a young man growing up in Maine, Lozier had no ambition to become a chef. In fact, he says, he had no particular interest in cooking. A chance encounter at a football game in 1954 changed his fate. He ran into an old friend who had just enlisted in the Army and convinced him to do the same.

After basic training, Lozier became a communications lineman and was sent to Stuttgart, Germany. There another acquaintance persuaded him that working in the kitchen was more fun than climbing telephone polls and laying field wiring out in the cold.

And so he headed for the kitchen, where he bluffed his way into a job by convincing the chef that he had baking experience although he’d never baked in his life. "Great," said the chef as he handed him a cookbook, "tonight we want chocolate cake and dinner rolls. See you later." Thus, Fred’s culinary career was born.

"I found I had a flair for baking and it came easily," Lozier said. He worked as a baker for the rest of his stint in the Army, and has supported himself and his family as a baker and pastry chef ever since!

Lozier built his reputation as a pastry chef at the University of Maine, St. Francis College in Biddeford, and at a number of summer resorts on the Maine Coast. He has also taught at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., Johnson and Wales College in Providence, R.I. and Nashua High School.

While teaching in Nashua, Lozier baked at Hampshire Hills Sports and Fitness Club in Milford in the summer to augment his teacher’s salary. In 1979, he decided to make some extra money by converting his home garage into a small bakery. He continued teaching but also baked for Hampshire Hills and other clients. His wife, Gloria, started working with him and kept the books.

In 1984, he decided he wanted his own full-time business and pastry shop. "My wife and I went to my accountant and I said, `What do you think of the idea of me quitting teaching and doing baking full-time? His immediate reaction was `NO. You’ll never make it baking cakes. You’ll never replace your teaching salary and benefits’."

"We walked out," Lozier said, "and I turned to my wife and said: "We need a new accountant. This guy’s too negative!" He hired a new accountant, rented space and established Frederick’s Pastries on 101A in Amherst that same year. In 1994 he and Gloria bought the 12,000 sq. ft. building that houses their shop. "I think that was one of the smartest things I’ve done," he said. The Loziers now use the majority of the space for their pastry shop and cappuccino bar and rent out the rest.

He uses one of his `war stories’ to illustrate: While making a delivery one stormy day -- with a van full of 3 large wedding cakes and other assorted pastries -- he hit a patch of water in the road; the van spiraled out of control , did several 360 degree turns, and came to rest against the guardrail. The cakes and pastries were ruined.

"I used my cellular phone and called the shop immediately. While I was being towed back, my daughter called in extra help and they immediately went to work re-creating every wedding cake and pastry that needed to be delivered. Ninety-five percent of the work was done by the time I arrived. We loaded them in our second van and off we went. Every cake was still delivered on time and no one knew the difference!" Was he stressed out? "I was O.K., until that night -- then it hit! We had to clean out the first van with a snowshovel."

Lozier thinks "good common sense" is the most important ingredient necessary to becoming a successful small business owner.