Now you can get La Farm’s bread at new downtown Cary location
La Farm Bakery is opening its new production facility in downtown Cary on Thursday, giving the popular bakery more space to make its hand-shaped bread and providing customers with another location to buy it.
This is the first phase of the facility at 220 W. Chatham St. For now, customers can buy freshly baked breads and pastries and watch the bakers in action. The facility will be open Monday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. The La Farm Bread Truck will be outside the location Monday through Saturday from 10:30 to 2:30 with breakfast and lunch items, including sandwiches.
There are future plans for the new Cary location to add retail space with coffee and sandwich offerings.
“It’s time for us to grow so that our bakers, who shape every single loaf by hand, have room to explore new ideas and produce breads to meet the demand of our customers,” said owner and Master Baker Lionel Vatinet in a news release.
He owns the bakery with his wife, Missy Vatinet. The bakery opened in Preston Corners on Northwest Cary Parkway in 1999. Vatinet and the bakery have been recognized nationally in multiple publications. He has been a James Beard Foundation semifinalist for the past three years.
As the bakery has grown in popularity – it sells breads to five Whole Foods markets in addition to the food truck and the State Farmers Market – the original location has been challenged with space limitations.
The new production facility has expanded cooler space to store grains and proofing coolers to allow breads to rise. There also is “lab space” to allow bakers to experiment with new techniques and a temperature-controlled pastry room.
As a result, space will be freed up at the Preston Corners site so warm breads will be able to be made throughout the day, particularly before lunch and dinner.
The Vatinets are seeking food and beverage retailers, chefs and restaurateurs who may be interested in leasing 5,600 square feet of the Sorrell Building on Chatham Street.
Downtown Cary has undergone continued revitalization with the addition of new restaurants, a hotel and retail. Missy Vatinet said in a new release that they are happy to contribute to “downtown Cary’s renaissance.”
Info: The original La Farm is at 4248 NW Cary Parkway. The production facility is at 220 W. Chatham St. lafarmbakery.com
Jessica Banov: 919-829-4831, @JessicaBanov
La Farm Bakery Open House
La Farm Bakery owner Lionel Vatinet hosts his fifth annual Bread Bakers Guild of America Open House from 3 to 5 p.m. June 24 at La Farm Bakery, 4248 NW Cary Parkway, Cary La Farm will offer behind-the-scene tours of the bakery, followed by a bread-shaping demo and an opportunity to see the bakers scoring and loading breads into and out of the hearth oven. A large variety of La Farm Bakery breads will be sampled – including Vatinet’s newest Barley Bread with Blueberries – and guests will take home a White Chocolate Mini Baguette. The event is free, but RSVPs are requested by emailing priya.joawn@lafarmbakery.com. lafarmbakery.com
This story was originally published June 15, 2017 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Now you can get La Farm’s bread at new downtown Cary location."