The Story Behind How Unrefined Bakery Redefined Allergen-Free Treats
By Stephen Hunt
Anyone blessed to be doing what they love in life knows the journey to that happy place normally has a detour or two. That’s the story for Anne Hoyt and Taylor Nicholson, a mother/daughter duo who are the co-owners of Unrefined Bakery, a small chain in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex that takes allergen-free baking to a new level. Unrefined currently has five locations across DFW, including two in Dallas (Medallion and Preston Center), one in Fort Worth, Frisco, and Richardson. Its most successful store is in Frisco at 3411 Preston Road.
And like many successful small businesses, this one was born from necessity. Hoyt and her husband raised their two daughters, Erin and Taylor, in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. “Her (Taylor’s) little sister (Erin) got diagnosed with Celiac Disease at 21, and we thought she was dying,” Hoyt recalled. “I then read about it and told her we’re all Celiac. She’d been symptomatic since a year old, and I’d been symptomatic before pregnancy but thought I was aging and had a dairy allergy. Then, Erin got diagnosed, and I was like, ‘We’re all Celiac.’”
Despite baking her entire life and having restaurant experience from her family operating locations of the popular breakfast chain Village Inn in Tulsa, Hoyt remembers feeling overwhelmed over having to completely rethink how she baked since she now had to take food allergies into account. “She (Taylor) started making food bars and sending them to influencers (food bloggers). “This was 2009,” Hoyt said. “I started baking. It was really hard, but we figured it out and started with 19 items. We gave them to family and friends at Christmas to see if they thought they were good, and they did. Then, we subleased a space and got in The Dallas Morning News’s mom’s blog. That took us to a back-page feature in The Dallas Morning News of the Sunday Style section. From there, it blew up by word of mouth.”
However, their leap into baking full-time came after both worked in the financial industry. Nicholson graduated from the University of Oklahoma after studying finance and accounting. Her first accounting job brought her to Dallas, and Anne followed, getting a job at a local bank. And as is the case with everyone working in a field outside of their calling, they both experienced that nagging feeling that something better and more properly suited for them was on the horizon.
“I got a job at a bank, and I would rather have died. They wanted me to be a teller,” Hoyt said. “I was like, ‘I’ve got more energy than you have ever seen, and you want me to stand there and count money?’ About a year in, in the height of when everything crashed in ’08, ’09, I quit. I said, ‘I’d rather die than do this, I can’t do this.’ [I’d] Baked my whole life. She (Taylor) made her first pie at three; I taught my daughters how to bake. Never dreamed we could make money doing it. I love to bake. I’m a servant, and baking is a good way to do that. This is like baking on steroids because you’re filling a niche that they can’t get anywhere else.”
It was a similar story for Nicholson, who was working long hours in accounting, which she knew wouldn’t fly long-term since she and her husband planned on starting a family. “I didn’t want to do it when I was going to have kids, which I knew was coming sooner rather than later. I knew it wasn’t the career I wanted,” Nicholson said.
The first Unrefined Bakery was near White Rock Lake in Dallas, a facility they also baked in. Eventually, they were producing baked goods for five stores after opening locations at Preston Center and in Rockwall in 2015 followed by stores at Medallion, Fort Worth, and Dallas Uptown before moving into an 8,000-square-foot facility in 2016.
And what best defines why Unrefined has such a loyal and sizeable group of customers is the simple belief it was founded on, which continues to resonate with all who come through their doors or order one of their various products online.
“Especially for kids, when you’re in school and everybody’s having a cupcake to celebrate a birthday, you don’t want to be that kid that’s left out,” Hoyt said. “A lot of teachers will come in and buy a dozen, put them in their freezers, and then if a kid needs that for a celebration, they get them. Parents do the same thing so they can have them on hand for when they need a cupcake. It’s nice they can let kids be kids.”
A Nice, Natural Progression
One item which has sold well since day one is cupcakes, Unrefined’s current top seller. Unrefined initially offered only chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, lemon, and carrot cupcakes, but Taylor aspired to unveiling a new cupcake each week, the Cupcake of the Week (COW), which she would announce every Friday, and the COW has become a big hit. “Cupcakes for sure (are our top seller),” Nicholson said. “Custom cakes are a huge portion of our business. Of our cupcakes, our best sellers are chocolate and Loaded Monkey, our signature cupcake. Our COW, Cupcake of the Week, is a top seller, but that changes every week.”
Hoyt credits Taylor for envisioning the COW becoming a big part of their business and for sticking to those beliefs to help make that vision a reality. It’s a perfect example of why this mother/daughter partnership continues thriving as Hoyt handles all the baking while Nicholson oversees all the bigger-picture aspects of Unrefined.
“She singlehandedly blew up our business with that cupcake,” Hoyt said. “That’s pretty cool. It’s great working with her. You know she’s got your back. We often disagree, but we always have the same end, which is really cool. Her sons have grown up in it. Her oldest son learned to walk, crawl, roll at our one store. It was so hometown. It was amazing.”
Another example of how well this partnership functions happened in 2017 when Hurricane Harvey hit Texas and Louisiana. By the afternoon the storm made landfall, Unrefined already had a cupcake in stores with a portion of proceeds going to hurricane relief.
Treated Like Family
Not only does Unrefined remain a true family business, but it’s an operation whose growth has happened naturally. “It’s been very organic growth, and that’s cool. We’re a niche market, but our customers love us,” Nicholson said. “We celebrate with food, and people need their food there. We give them the birthday cakes and the cupcakes they want. They want to feel normal. We are able to restore normalcy to people’s lives by allowing them to have a cupcake or treat they’re accustomed to eating. It’s a fun experience of going to a bakery and getting to pick something out, but when you have multiple food allergies, that’s tough.”
At Unrefined, they treat customers and their staff like family, which is of course, by design. “The thing we didn’t anticipate was how much people would love us,” Hoyt said. “People liked Village Inn. Everybody had a story in Tulsa; they had grown up going there with their mother, their father, but they didn’t love us. We fill a space they can’t get anywhere else. It’s what holds us (together) sometimes when it gets really hard. It’s been quite a ride. It’s been interesting; COVID made it really interesting.”
Those tough times that Unrefined and many businesses battled during the COVID-19 pandemic only reinforced that Hoyt and Nicholson are exactly where they’re supposed to be. “We also have a lot of grit. That’s been a big part of our success,” Nicholson said. “There’s no quit in us. Some years have been challenging. Last year was hard, (but) we’re in it too deep and we care about our customers. If we had wanted to build a business strictly to make money, it wouldn’t have been in this industry. We’re not in the bakery business to strike oil.”
Unrefined also listens to its customers’ desires, like when one person wanted a keto cake before keto became so mainstream, and they put a keto cake in stores immediately. “People come to me constantly with new products. They want something new, something to be excited about,” Nicholson said. “We’ve been good about launching new products.”
“She (Hoyt) has been doing a lot of recipe development, and we’ve got some fun things in the pipeline. I think last year, we launched new cinnamon rolls and dinner rolls, items we had not had. We’re launching sausage kolaches in the coming weeks. People will lose their minds (over those). They’re so good.”
And since Unrefined is a true family business, it seems only fitting that their most successful location is in Frisco, a very family-friendly community. “This is our Number 1 store in terms of revenue and customer counts, everything. It’s our busiest store,” Nicholson said. “Frisco’s been a perfect home for Unrefined because it’s our target demographic. I always say we cater, for lack of a better term, to the soccer mom who wants to feed her kids well. And it’s perfect to be here in Frisco in a family-based environment. There’s a lot of families in this area, great schools, things like that which draw and attract families.”
Besides its cupcakes, brownies and other treats, other offerings at Unrefined include pie crusts, dinner rolls, and lunch items like pizzas and sandwiches. “We want to be open and transparent with our ingredients. We can’t give you our recipes, but we disclose every ingredient,” Nicholson said. “We want people to see us making their sandwich, there’s no secret stuff going on in the back.”
“Our stores are an open concept, which ties into our philosophy of being open and transparent. We can’t promise a clean, organic, healthy item without being able to walk the walk when it comes to ingredients we use. We offer something other people don’t. Good luck finding a (sandwich with) organic lunch meat, cheese, and produce on homemade bread somewhere let alone allergen-free but it’s gluten-free, dairy-free and soy-free, peanut, all the things.”
And for both Hoyt and Nicholson, seeing Unrefined continue to grow while staying true to its mission of providing allergen-free food to its customers, is their barometer of success. “People ask if we’ll give them the recipes. We’re not pink, lacy, and frilly. We’re industrial and that’s intentional,” Hoyt said.
“It started with the two of us, which is neat. Today, we have over 50 employees,” Nicholson said. “We have awesome customers. The love and loyalty we get from our customers is great. We’re a team and it’s really fulfilling. We’re pretty lucky in what we created that people welcome us and love us. It’s special. It is a privilege for sure.”
Stephen Hunt is a longtime Frisco resident and proud customer of Unrefined Bakery.
