![]() ![]() She has people from all over the country dropping into her bakery as they travel, she said. Her business now has 64,000 followers on Facebook and 31,000 followers on Instagram. “I literally went from three employees to 16 employees within a three-week space,” she said. Her business skyrocketed after the first round of publicity, forcing her to hire more help, she said. She went on to be featured on the Travel Channel and Food Channel and has been on ABC’s “Good Morning America” show twice. After being featured in an article on AL.com in 2017, the story of her business and creative talent got picked up by Southern Living magazine. Fame and fortuneīryant, who has been in the food business for about 20 years, has achieved a good bit of notoriety for her designer cakes and milkshakes. She also knows her husband will want to get one of the bakery’s “Kollosal” milkshakes, she said. One of Allison’s friends also had a birthday cake from K & J’s, and Tate said she plans to order Allison’s sixth birthday cake from K & J’s. The Tates had visited K & J’s in Uptown three times already and fallen in love with the strawberry cupcakes with strawberry brownies on top, she said. She and her 5-year-old daughter, Allison, formerly visited Dreamcakes every Friday afternoon as a reward if her daughter was good at school that week and love that they can restart that tradition with K & J’s, she said. Ross Bridge resident Alex Tate said she and her family were so excited to see K & J’s open. “The parents just have to show up with the kids, and that’s it,” Bryant said. It’s designed to make it easy for parents to plan a party, she said. She already has partnered with Front Porch, a Ross Bridge restaurant, to provide pizza for birthday parties as well, she said. ![]() ![]() “I’m super-excited about the birthday parties,” she said. Also, part of the dining area can easily be sectioned off for birthday parties, team parties or other group events, she said. It has seating for at least 50 people inside and another 25 outside, Bryant said. The Ross Bridge location has more seating and, at least at the outset, has seen a lot more walk-in business. The Uptown site also handles a lot of DoorDash orders because of the volume of people working in downtown Birmingham, she said. The Uptown location has a dining area and has walk-in traffic, but it’s more of a “production kitchen” that handles a lot of large and corporate orders, Bryant said. She and one of the bakers rotate back and forth between the two sites as needed. It’s been amazing.”īryant split her staff of 14 people (16 including herself and her husband, who helps when he’s not at his primary railroad job) between Uptown and Ross Bridge. “The support we’ve received from the community is just overwhelming, and everybody is just so nice and so welcoming. “I’m so surprised how busy Ross Bridge is,” Bryant said. And business has been bustling ever since. The fact that the Dreamcakes spot already was designed as a bakery was just icing on the cake, so to speak.īryant redecorated the bakery with pink walls, put her own special touches in place and had the doors back open by late December. Plus, a lot of her former customers from Alabaster and Shelby County were missing not having her close by, and a Hoover location is much closer than Birmingham, Barnes said. “We had a ton of customers we were already familiar with, and we always sold out,” she said. Two to three years before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, K & J’s started bringing its food truck to Ross Bridge and was making appearances every Wednesday night, Bryant said. K & J’s, which has gained national attention for its designer cakes and “Kollosal” milkshakes and last year received a bronze award for Alabama Retailer of the Year for businesses with sales under $1 million, had just relocated from Alabaster to the Uptown District in Birmingham in April.īryant, the founder of the bakery, had no plans to open a second location, especially so soon, but her commercial real estate agent, Abra Barnes, spotted the former Dreamcakes location and said she knew it would be perfect. Just four months after Dreamcakes closed both of its locations in Homewood and Ross Bridge, Kristal Bryant stepped in and opened a second location of K & J’s Elegant Pastries & Creamery in the former Dreamcakes spot in the Ross Bridge Town Center. Ross Bridge residents didn’t have to go long without having a bakery in their commercial district. ![]()
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