Local Bakery Is Mableton’s "Sweet Spot"

Tucked away in a small strip mall at 669 Veterans Memorial Highway is one of Mableton’s best kept local secrets, the bakery. This locally owned and operated bakery has been tempting grateful residents with such offerings as key lime flavored cupcakes, creamy red velvet cakes, rich chocolate brownies and crispy crunchy cookies since 2004.

On a recent visit to the shop, I had the opportunity to speak with owner-operator Tanya Thompson about how she came to open this popular local bakery. Says Thompson, “My mother was taking a culinary class in baking while in New York and when she came to visit us one year she brought her baking supplies with her to show me what she had learned.”  

When Thompson’s mother returned to New York she decided to leave her baking tools  behind in hopes her daughter would carry on with baking.  Thompson later decided to bake a cake for her husband to take to work, and the rest is history.

“From that first cake came an order from one of my husband’s co-workers’ asking for a wedding cake. Since I didn’t have that much experience in baking yet, I turned down the request several times before I finally gave in. The cake was a big success.”

Shortly thereafter, a restaurant located in the building where Thompson’s husband works wanted to start selling her cakes by the slice.

According to Thompson, “Pretty soon the restaurant was selling about 50 slices of cake per day.”  

From these successful beginnings, Thompson and her husband started thinking about opening their own bakery.

Thompson was a fulltime teacher at the time, however, and when school resumed after the summer vacation she wasn’t able to devote much time to her newly found baking skills. These first successes in the baking arena left an indelible mark on Thompson and while on her way home from work one day she saw a “for rent “ sign on a building space not too far from her home. The Thompsons decided to go for their dream and proceeded to rent the space and begin renovating it.

Thompson says of her husband of 20 years, “My husband has been very supportive of me and the business. He financed the operation and along with renovations spent the first four months of it’s opening helping me run it until his return to the corporate world.”  

Business has been steadily growing for Thompson, with more and more locals stopping in and a few other restaurants like Sweet Georgia’s Juke Joint,  selling her sweet treats to their patrons.

 “We’ve had some good results with “word of mouth” about the bakery, but we would like to expand with another location and hopefully franchise within the next five years. Currently we’re looking into advertising more actively and using social media like Facebook and local festivals to make more people and businesses aware of what we have to offer.”

While at the bakery, I couldn’t resist purchasing some of the scrumptious looking cupcakes on display at the counter. The shop’s signature “red velvet cupcakes” are a divine creation with the shop's own cream cheese icing atop a moist sweet cake. Another local favorite, the key lime pie flavored cupcake, is the next best thing to the famous pie itself. Perseverance and a natural instinct for baking has enabled Thompson to turn her dream from a simple hobby into a very real success story.