A Raleigh bakery returned to its roots by raising funds for Ukraine. It’s growing, too.
When Raleigh bakery Union Special offered 50 chocolate babkas as a fundraiser for aid to Ukraine, the braided loaves sold out in a couple of hours. When they offered all the cookie sales from two days, customers cleared out the stores.
In all, owner Andrew Ullom estimates the bakery raised $1,500 for Save the Children’s Ukraine Crisis Relief Fund, organized through Bakers Against Racism. In all, that group reports raising $2 million in a nationwide bake sale.
“We were cleaned out,” Ullom said. “We want to be a business that keeps different issues in the local conversation. It was an opportunity for us to say, ‘Hey if you want to help, you can literally sit on your couch and help out.’ This is something that is an extension of our business.”
Dishes to drum up donations
Bakeries and restaurants and the entire food industry are often tied to fundraisers and causes, offering dishes and meals to drum up donations for disaster relief or social justice initiatives.
The impact of the COVID pandemic made fundraising more difficult for restaurants, as most were suddenly in need of aid themselves.
With the world’s eyes on Ukraine, this bake sale offered Union Special a way back.
“This was something that ripped the Band-Aid off for us after not doing this for a while,” Ullom said. “We’ve been eight months off of fundraising. But this has shown us it’s easier to do these things than we thought. It’s scary, but we know now that it’s possible.”
The Ukraine fundraiser was led by Union Special head baker Maria Luna, who recently became a partner in the bakery.
Ullom said the pandemic’s ebbs and flows had reached a low point for Union Special in January, as COVID case counts reached the highest point of the pandemic.
“The wholesale business evaporated for three months,” Ullom said. “Had we not pivoted like we did with the takeout menu and throwing stuff at the wall, had we not done that we would not be here.”
In the early days of the pandemic, when grocery store bread aisles were bare and flour was scare, Union Special was among the local bakeries making a point to bake everyday loaves to meet the need. Union Special also baked a sliced sourdough that customers could donate to Raleigh’s Interfaith Food Shuttle. The beginning of this year brought Ullom back to the start.
“January 2022 was very scary, as scary as March 2020,” Ullom said. “We’ve had to figure out how to make it and fight tooth and nail to get it done.”
A rising dough lifts all bread
Union Special is now expanding for a second time, building into a new 2,000 square foot space in the Gateway Plaza shopping center. Last year the bakery expanded into Downtown Raleigh with the addition of a new cafe on Fayetteville Street.
Like a rising dough that either needs to be baked or risk ruin, Ullom said Union Special’s wholesale business had reached a crossroads.
“We’re kind of at max capacity,” Ullom said. “It’s kind of a growing pain. The choice was to grow or get smaller. At this point we might as well grow it. We have a bigger footprint now than I ever thought we would.”
Before the pandemic and in the early days of Union Special, the bakery had already grown its wholesale orders into six figures, putting breads and buns on menus all over the Triangle. Ullom said that’s driving diners to the cafes in ways he didn’t expect.
“Wholesale has been something we’re seeing more and more from people saying they had our bread at Kipos or Rosewater or another restaurant in town,” Ullom said. “Beyond a revenue stream, it’s the one facet of marketing we hadn’t thought we were actually doing.”
The new wholesale space will be behind Fine Folk, an upcoming restaurant next to Union Special. The bakery will also clear out a lot of the shaping and mixing that goes on behind a long window in the Gateway Plaza cafe.
Possible pizza?
The expansion will open up space and time, Ullom hopes, to revisit some form of dinner service. Union Special was crafted to be an all day cafe, but hasn’t had the chance to explore what a steady PM service might look like since opening in the summer of 2019.
For months, the dining room and patio have been a residency for Fine Folk, the restaurant project from Christopher Lopez, which Ullom is a partner in. Once Fine Folk moves into its permanent space, Ullom has plans for the void: pizza:
“I’d love to make pizza here a few nights a week,” Ullom said. “Pizza is the new barbecue craze, and it’s something that fits here. I think a neighborhood shop from us would do OK.”
This story was originally published March 10, 2022 at 8:00 AM.
