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Meet Taylor Owings of Sally’s Gluten Free Bakery in Sandy Springs and Alpharetta

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Taylor Owings.

Sally and Taylor, the owners behind Sally’s Gluten Free Bakery, are gearing up to open their second location this fall on Kimball Bridge Road in Alpharetta. After spending three years establishing Sally’s as one of Atlanta’s favorite spots for gluten free baked goods, Chasteen and Owings are excited to bring their fresh baked goods to the Alpharetta neighborhood.

“Taylor and I are absolutely thrilled to be expanding to Alpharetta,” Chasteen, now 27, chimes in eagerly. “We’ve probably gotten a few hundred requests over the past six months for another location in the Alpharetta / Johns Creek area so we’re really excited to be making this happen.”

The new location is in the Kimball Commons Shopping Center on Kimball Bridge Road just south of Old Milton Parkway. Owings recalls picking the location specifically because of its great access to major cut-through roads in the area. “A number of our customers had expressed their distaste for Roswell Road traffic,” explains Owings. “We wanted to make sure the new location would be more accessible to people in the surrounding area. Kimball Bridge at Old Milton is a great crossroad as most addresses in the Alpharetta and Johns Creek neighborhoods will be less than five miles away.”

The Alpharetta location is going to feature the same assortment of fresh gluten free baked goods currently available at the Sandy Springs bakery. “We’ve always said our mission is to provide you with a local spot where you can choose from a wide variety of baked goods made fresh every morning from scratch and we’re keeping true to that as we expand,” explains Owings, now 25. “Sally and I have tried our best to model the experience of coming to Sally’s around what we would want if we walked into a gluten free bakery.”

Sally and Taylor share a passion for the gluten free lifestyle that dates back well before opening Sally’s Gluten Free Bakery in Sandy Springs in December of 2009. The sibling duo remember growing up watching their mother battle chronic joint pain. After finding a gluten free diet eliminated her pain, the rest of the family soon followed suit.

“My stomach was upset all of the time growing up,” explains Chasteen, now 27. “The aches went away after being gluten free for only a few weeks. Taylor had the same experience with his chronic fatigue. The diet can feel like a sacrifice every now and then but once you feel so much better you know you’ll never go back to eating gluten again.”

With a passion for baking since childhood, Chasteen’s interest did not stop after going gluten free. Instead, Chasteen remembers seeing her new diet as a challenge: how to make her families’ recipes gluten free without sacrificing on texture or taste. As her efforts were producing a number of great gluten free recipes, Chasteen and Owings realized the bigger opportunity and decided to open up a completely gluten free bakery.

“Being gluten free ourselves, Sally and I felt like from our experiences at grocery stores there was a real need for better tasting gluten free baked goods,” recalls Owings, now 25. “The challenges for us were in the logistics. We wanted Sally’s to be a place focused on what anybody that’s gluten free would want; a place where you could actually sample things and then choose from a wide variety of breads that were baked fresh, every day, from scratch, and were available without having to preorder.”

The focus on customer experience is paying off for Chasteen and Owings. Today Sally’s Gluten Free Bakery is one of Atlanta’s favorite spots for gluten free baked goods, specializing in breads, take and bake pizzas, cakes, cupcakes, and pies with many dairy, egg, and soy free options.

Owings attributes the bakeries’ success to more than just products and process. “I think people appreciate being able to interact with someone who understands the gluten free lifestyle. Every day we’ll have people come in with questions about the diet and it’s really important for us to be in a position where we can try to help them.”

Sally’s Gluten Free Bakery, located in the Parkside Shopping Center on Roswell Road just north of I-285, has become one of Atlanta’s favorite spots for gluten free baked goods since its opening in December of 2009. Bonnie Owings and Sally Chasteen, the mother-daughter duo behind the recipes, love baking from scratch. Ever since the whole family was diagnosed with gluten sensitivities, Owings and Chasteen have directed that passion for scratch baking towards figuring out how to make their families’ bread recipes gluten free without sacrificing on texture or taste.

“All of a sudden we couldn’t eat any of our favorite family breads,” explains Chasteen. “It’s crazy to look back on because it really all started from our shared desire to just get back the breads we missed. It wasn’t until we were sharing some loaves we had made with a few gluten free patients in our doctors group that we realized the opportunity we had.”

Today Sally’s Gluten Free Bakery is a paradise for the gluten free community. Chasteen’s brother, Taylor Owings, oversees the business while the mother-daughter team focuses on baking an assortment of handcrafted loaves, muffins, rolls, cakes, and cupcakes fresh each morning.

Customers are able to sample a daily selection of baked goods and can purchase most items without preordering. Popular selections among patrons of Sally’s are the CRAW bread, a hearty breakfast toast full of cinnamon, raisins, and walnuts and the banana bread, a moist mini loaf bursting with flavor.

“It’s certainly hard work operating a bakery,” admits Chasteen. “But we wouldn’t trade it for anything. Every day we have people coming in who are so grateful for what we are doing. We’re providing people with something they love.”

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I would say it’s been a fairly smooth ride. We’re coming up on 8 years now for our first location and it’s certainly gotten a lot easier having the help of our team of employees which has grown over the years. I think in the beginning, there were two primary struggles. The first is a classic – having a family business and figuring out how to work well together. We each knew our strengths and had a general idea of who would focus on what – but both Sally and I operationally can be control freaks so in the grey areas, in the beginning we had to duke it out over who was responsible for this or that but everything gets sorted out over time. The second struggle was unique to us having a gluten free bakery fairly early on in the market. There wasn’t much in the way of best practices that had been established for gluten free bakeries as far as what the best product mix would be for any given season OR like how much busier would the holidays be for us with a holiday menu OR where should we focus our marketing? Those are the things that you end up optimizing after a few years but it can be incredibly tough in the beginning and the stakes are really up there when it’s a new business.

So, as you know, we’re impressed with Sally’s Gluten Free Bakery – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
To me, Sally’s Gluten Free Bakery is about providing people with a local place where they can choose from a great selection of baked goods made every morning fresh from scratch.

I would say our specialties are our breads, but more recently we’ve become especially known for our chocolate chip cookies and our carrot cake.

I’m most proud of reaching a critical mass early on that allowed us to offer our items fresh every day and from our own locations. And having ten to twelve samples of items each day so that people can come in and experience the delight of being able to try so many items. When you’re gluten free, that’s just not something you ever get to do. Seeing the delight on people’s faces when they walk in – it’s energizing and never gets old.

I think being gluten free ourselves as owners sets us apart from some places. And then really caring about the details. It really matters – especially when someone’s health is on the line.

So, what’s next? Any big plans?
Time will tell! We’re always experimenting with new recipes – we used to call our kitchen the laboratory – so stay tuned…

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Getting in touch: VoyageATL is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.

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