Owner Laurie Chapman Blakey named Pearl’s Bake Shoppe after her grandmother.
By 8 a.m. on the Thursday before Easter, seven staff members of Pearl’s Bake Shoppe have already been working for five hours, and 20 more workers are on the way.
On one side of the shop, employees bustle through the baking kitchen in flour-dusted black aprons, pulling hot sheet trays out of the oven, poring over binders full of recipes and leveling batter into cake pans lined with parchment.
“Nothing we serve is over 12 hours old,” says Pearl’s owner Laurie Chapman Blakey.
Decorators convene on the other side of the shop, meticulously topping cupcakes, frosting cakes, and painting flowers, bunnies and chicks onto cakes and cookies for outgoing orders. The smell of vanilla, citrus zest and caramelized sugar lingers in the air.
At the shop’s entrance is a coffee bar, a substantial seating area and a long table holding bouquets of multiflavored cake pops. A large wraparound display case fills the back half of the space. The case, an antique from the 1800s, is filled with goods baked and decorated that morning.
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Pearl’s Catering Manager Sophia Jackson takes a phone order.
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Freshly baked macarons at Pearl's Bake Shoppe
One cake, a big seller for Easter, is decorated with orange, green and pink stripes and topped with carrots made of icing. It has what appears to be a large bite taken out of it, and a fondant bunny lays back against it, fat, happy and covered in crumbs. Bunny-shaped sugar cookies painted in pink and purple icing are finished with a dusting of white glitter sprinkles at the tail. Other sweet and savory items sit on lace doilies atop metal serving trays, waiting to be snatched up. Sweet-potato biscuit sandwiches with local country ham lie in a seductive pile next to a row of giant cinnamon rolls.
Blakey decided to launch this business after retiring from a 25-year career in real estate when she turned 50 in January of 2009. “I have always had an entrepreneurial spirit,” she says. “I wanted to do something creative when I retired, and I love all things culinary.”
“I think my inspiration was that I wanted to create a legacy that, if my grandmother was alive, would make her very proud.” —Laurie Chapman Blakey
Pearl’s is named after and inspired by Blakey’s grandmother, Pearl Gentry Chapman. “My grandmother taught me how to bake everything from biscuits to soufflés,” Blakey says. “I think my inspiration was that I wanted to create a legacy that, if my grandmother was alive, would make her very proud.” A showcase dedicated to Pearl fills a large space at the front of the shop and features photos of her with her family, as well as an homage to the family matriarch. The case also exhibits a rack of Pearl’s well-loved rolling pins and her own floral apron that she made from a chicken feed bag.
Blakey and business partner Laura Condrey opened the original Pearl’s on Grove Avenue in 2010 under the name Pearl’s Cupcakes. In 2013, they opened a second location in Charlottesville, Blakey’s hometown. After encountering staffing issues, a common problem in a college town, Blakey realized they couldn’t keep up the level of “Pearl’s perfect” to which they aspire and reluctantly shut the doors in March 2018.
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The bakery moved to a larger location on Patterson Avenue in October 2018.
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Pearl’s cupcakes, the shop’s original offering, are still one of its most popular treats.
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Pearl’s employees Jacara Alexander (left) and Lauren Migrala decorate cupcakes in the new, larger kitchen.
It was then that Blakey, with her sights set on expansion, bought out Condrey and decided to relocate just down the road from the original Pearl’s to an exponentially larger space that had previously been occupied by the Toy Center for 50 years. The transition from the store on Grove to the new location on Patterson Avenue took three days, with the newly christened Pearl’s Bake Shoppe opening to the public on Oct. 22, 2018.
While the original Pearl’s was equipped with only two ovens in its 1,600-square-foot space, the new store, at a whopping 4,600 square feet, holds eight ovens and much more. Other new additions to the shop include the coffee bar and seating area, a wedding cake tasting room, and additional display cases for an expanding selection of baked goods made for customers with dietary restrictions — including gluten-free, sugar-free and vegan options.
Mary Bannister, Pearl’s general manager, recalls the decision to move to a bigger space: “We were definitely excited. It’s something that for probably the last four years we’ve all been like, ‘We just need a bigger shop. We need a bigger shop.’ We knocked down walls, we pushed things out of the way, we built bookshelves, we tried to make the best out of that little shop on Grove that we could. It got to the point that we couldn’t take on any more business. We couldn’t do any more products. We couldn’t expand at all anymore. We had really maxed out, and we were pushing ourselves so hard to do more because we wanted to do more with such a limited amount of space.”
At the old shop, it was nearly impossible to keep the cases fully stocked with sweets for those with dietary restrictions, not to mention take on all the orders that would come in. It got to the point where they had to turn down orders. For Blakey, this was when she knew they had to make a change. “If you turn down your customers, they are going to go somewhere else,” she says. The solution? Expand.
Less than a year at the new location, Pearl’s is thriving. Blakey and her staff work through the stack of special orders for Easter with calm precision. The expansion offers more opportunity for the future and the ability to accommodate more patrons.
“I want to make a difference — I want the company to make a difference. Not just with the product we offer, but I want to give back to the community.” —Laurie Chapman Blakey
For the moment, Blakey plans to focus on the day-to-day of keeping the shop running smoothly, but she does see more opportunities. “I think down the road you will see a business that has some shipping viability,” she says. “I don’t think we are completely done with the Charlottesville area. I do think there will be a place [there] within the next 12 months that will have Pearl’s offerings again.”
Another important part of Blakey’s mission is for Pearl’s to be focused on community. “I want to make a difference — I want the company to make a difference. Not just with the product we offer, but I want to give back to the community. I want to give back to causes that are near and dear to our family and our employees here.” Some of the causes that Pearl’s has supported over the years are Service Dogs of Virginia, Ronald McDonald House and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. For its Mother’s Day tea, 100 percent of proceeds went to Blakey’s late mother’s favorite charity, Greene County Animal Shelter.
A quick look at Pearl’s Instagram, Facebook page or website will show an attention to detail that only a true baker possesses. Each week Blakey plans the menu, and she updates the shop’s social media daily with flavors and specials.
When thinking of new flavors, Blakey says, “I usually look at what’s going on in the world.” For the premiere of the final season of “Game of Thrones,” the shop’s menu featured cupcakes inspired by the show, including the Brienne of Tarth, a vanilla cupcake with a blackberry and blueberry compote, a brie and cream cheese frosting, and a ladyfinger on top, in addition to a menu of coffee drinks based on the HBO series. After Blakey posted the new flavors on social media, customers flocked to the shop. “It was like Valentine’s Day in here,” she says.
Jenny Collins, a Pearl’s devotee, knew of Blakey through a friend before moving to Richmond. “I hadn’t been to either of her stores before this one opened. It’s a lovely location,” she says. “Some of the items are very unique. I’ve had coffees, cupcakes, cookies, profiteroles, beignets. There’s nothing there that hasn’t been fantastic.” One thing Collins loves about Pearl’s is how fresh each product is. She likes to buy three cupcakes at a time and parse them out through the week. “They are really good a couple days later — you’d be surprised. I give them to all my friends if they have a birthday coming up. I go the night before, and I buy a couple, and then I can take them the next day, and they are still good.”
With a rotating variety of specialty cupcakes, offerings are different each day. While certain flavors, such as Collins’ personal favorite, Double Trouble (chocolate cupcake, chocolate buttercream), or Top-Hat (vanilla cupcake with chocolate buttercream) are daily staples, others, such as Grandma’s Garden — made with fresh corn, nutmeg, vanilla and a rosemary-brown-butter glaze — are seasonal or by request.
In anticipation of Mother’s Day, Blakey started experimenting with jellies and jams to be served alongside biscuits and scones at a Mother’s Day tea. After the success of the fruit jams at the tea, she is now making jam in bulk and serving it to customers upon request with a warm biscuit and local butter. Current flavors include strawberry-lemon, triple berry-basil and blueberry-lavender. The lavender and basil are just a few of many local ingredients pulled from Blakey’s Richmond garden and small family farm near Charlottesville. She tries to use local ingredients whenever she can, just as her grandmother did.
It is the memory of her grandmother’s perseverance, strength and resilience that inspires Blakey daily. “There have been days when I’ve thought, ‘Oh, my God, I don’t think I can put my feet on the floor,’ but then I think back to when I was a child and all the incredible things that she did for us and for our family and the people in the community, and I’m like, ‘How can you gripe and complain? Just get up and go for it.’ ”
