A gluten-free bakery and cafe is opening Saturday on M.L. King Boulevard with the aid of a Kickstarter campaign that helped owner Lezli Lewis reopen her business after an earlier site on Brainerd Road didn’t work out.
Known as Carving Rock Kitchen, the new 1,000-square-foot microbakery and restaurant is at 301 E. M.L. King Blvd. in the former site of a Peach Cobbler restaurant, which closed in January after two years of operation. Lewis said she has repainted the storefront and will reopen the Carving Rock Kitchen at 10 a.m. Saturday, offering gluten-free biscuits, cinnamon rolls, pretzels and other baked items.
Carving Rock Kitchen first opened last September at 3950 Brainerd Road, “and we had an overwhelming response when we opened,” Lewis said in an interview this week. But plumbing problems in the building forced the closing of the bakery after seven weeks of operation.
To fund a new location, Lewis launched a Kickstarter campaign that succeeded in raising $10,000 to pay for the new location and the opening this weekend.
“Our Kickstarter was originally going to be to expand our operations and offerings with bigger and better equipment,” she said. “With the unfortunate plumbing and landlord situation we found ourselves in, that changed to helping us relocate and replace the equipment that had been owned by the landlord.”