‘A very welcoming space.’ Bakery to open in Macon’s historic Ingleside Village

What started out as a way to be at home with her then 6-month-old son about five years ago has bloomed into a successful bakery business for Adriana Horton.

Horton — who founded the Mill Hill Bakers Collective in 2019 as her home based baking business Oh Honey Baking Co. grew — is opening her own storefront bakery next month in the historic Ingleside Village in Macon.

The bakers collective is a nonprofit shared kitchen program for baking businesses that are licensed under the state Department of Agriculture located in the Mill Hill Community Arts Center and operated by the Macon Arts Alliance.

In mid-May, Horton expects to open Oh Honey Baking Co. at 2391 Ingleside Ave. between Ingleside Village Pizza and The Society Garden.

What to expect

“We will have cake, coffee, and charcuterie,” Horton said. “You’ll be able to come in, grab a box that will have sliced meat, cheese and fresh fruit and local bagel chips and things like that.

“They’ll be pre-made, lunchable style boxes for kids. So, you can come in and grab lunch for your child before you take them to school.”

Horton also plans to offer cold cut sandwiches, and, of course, all kinds of baked goods.

“You’ll be able to come in and purchase an already decorated cake that is like more of a modern aesthetic than what you would find in a grocery store,” she said. “We’ll have doughnuts and muffins and scones and cupcakes and brownies — all the different things that you think of.

“But really, I try to focus on recipes that are like Southern Living — stuff that your grandma would make in the best way. Then we’ll have coffee and we’ll have things like a honey bee latte, which will be a honey, vanilla, cinnamon syrup.”

Horton is partnering with fellow business owner Sophia Gargicevich-Almeida, who started with a mobile espresso bar about a year ago and recently opened a storefront at 4027 Watson Blvd., Suite 220, in Warner Robins.

“She really impressed me last year with the way she ran her business and getting up at 5 a.m. in the morning and setting up a little cart and having to tote around an entire espresso machine by yourself — just crazy impressive,” Horton said.

At Oh Honey Baking Co., Horton will offer espresso, drip coffee, iced coffee and “things like that.” She’ll buy her coffee wholesale from Gargicevich-Almeida.

“I’ll be getting coffee from her and she’ll be getting baked goods from me,” Horton said. “And her logo really looks like it’s friends with my logo. They look like buddies.”

The Oh Honey Baking Co. logo features a hexagon with bees flying around while Little Light Coffee Co. features a yellow light bulb.

Horton also plans to continue creating wedding cakes.

“I will definitely still do wedding cakes,” she said. “Those are my favorite to do. I love arranging flowers on a cake.”

By request, customers interested in a wedding cake will be able to come into the bakery for a cake tasting and Horton can create a custom design or customers can show her what they already have in mind for her to do.

All in a name

Horton was asked how she came up with the name for her business and whether any other of her other products have honey as an ingredient.

“My grandma collected bumble bee broaches,” Horton said. “So when I was coming up for a name for my business, I wanted to do something with bees, and I played around with different names that had bees in it and nothing was really fitting.

“And then it just popped into my head to do Oh Honey and then just to include bees in the logo. Originally, I actually started it as Oh Honey Design Co. because I had just had my son and I was making baby bibs and selling them on Etsy and to friends and then baby bibs turned it into making cakes for babies’ birthdays and then I changed it to Oh Honey Baking Co.”

In addition to at least one coffee flavor, Horton also plans to offer a honey-flavored cake at the bakery and expects to pair it with a honey infused Italian buttercream or a lavender buttercream.

“My pound cake recipe I found in an old 1800s church cookbook, and it starts off in like a cold oven and it makes this just amazing crust on top that you just want to eat like a cookie,” she said.

Horton was also asked where she got other recipes.

“My mom always baked so much when I was growing up — snickerdoodles and chocolate pies,” Horton said. “Everybody would always be sad if she showed up without one of her pies.

“So, baking was just kind of always something that I was around.”

When she moved to Georgia from her hometown of Pensacola, Florida, in 2009 when she and her husband married, Horton said she would hang out and bake with her mother-in-law who taught her different recipes.

Her husband’s “Maw Maw” — his grandmother in Mississippi — taught her how to make beignets.

Additionally, Horton gained experience working at bakeries and at a restaurant, starting with working in a Publix bakery for about a year.

“I would have to do 10 cakes in an hour,” Horton said. “So, all my cake friends say I’m really fast with buttercream. But I owe it all to Publix.”

She next worked for a short stint at another, now former bakery, the Dessert Factory that was located in the Macon State Farmers Market.

Horton then started working at the Fountain of Juice, where she was put on the schedule to bake after making a cake for the owner. She baked there for about three years.

At that point, Horton was going back to school to become a nurse when she found out she was pregnant. When her son, Jesse James, now 5, was born, Horton knew she didn’t want to go back to school or to a work place but wanted to spend time at home with him.

So, she baked.

Horton said she fell in love with what she terms “UK baking — where you do everything by weight.”

“I really love baking with recipes like from New Zealand and there’s a bakery called Magnolia Kitchen in New Zealand and I have her cookbook and all the recipes she has in there are just incredible.”

A welcoming space

Horton’s vision for Oh Honey Baking Co. is a comfortable, welcoming space.

The interior will feature a long bench seating — two 9-foot pews that will be reupholstered along with four tables to go along with the bench seating plus four chairs.

“You’ll be able to come in and set up to work if you want to use our Wi-Fi,” Horton said. “We have a big comfy velvet couch that’s going to be in there and a big 65-inch TV that we can have movie night sometimes around the holidays and sometimes it’ll just be a slide show of different things that are going on around Macon or music videos or something like that.”

There will also be a comfortable chair.

“My mom is actually fixing up an old doll house that was gifted to us by my old landlord. Her parents got it at Museum of Arts and Sciences in the ‘70s,” Horton said.

”She’s made all kinds of little furniture for it and that will go in the corner in the couch area so kids will be able to go in there and play with the doll house and we’ll have little floor pillows for kids to sit on while they play with the doll house.”

There will also be a coffee table.

“You’ll be able to sit in the window but the couch will face the window — kinda like a Friends’ feel — like the show Friends —a very welcoming space,” Horton said.

“There’s going to be a mustard hexagon tile that will wrap around the front of the (coffee) bar and there’s going to be some open shelving back behind there, and I’ve got like a lava lamp, a beehive teapot and just all kinds of fun Knick Knacks and things that will go behind there.”

Something that’s a little different from most Ingleside Village merchants that are closed on Monday, Oh Honey Baking Co. will be open on that day.

“I figure Monday at a coffee shop is probably going to be the busiest time of the week,” Horton said. “Everybody’s trying to get going, right?”

Operating hours are expected to be 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday.