‘Teeny-tiny’ Brunch Supply sweetens an Upper Fells Point neighborhood

Andy Bruhns gets tears in his eyes when he reflects on the past year. When he and his wife, Glenna Morgan, decided to open a so-called micro-bakery in Upper Fells Point in late 2024, they didn’t know what kind of reception they’d get.

He needn’t have worried.

“We’ve had a really wonderful first year,” Bruhns said, getting choked up. “The community really turned out for us. They seem to care and, like, they respond and resonate with it all.”

The couple’s business not only survived — it is now thriving and hitting “a nice stride,” he said.

Brunch Supply opened at the tail end of 2024. Then Bruhns was caught up in the massive purge of federal government workers last year, losing his job at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He took it as a sign he should fast-track plans to work at the bakery full-time in 2025.

At the small corner store at Ann and Gough streets, Brunch Supply is all about its small production. Bruhns calls it a micro-bakery because it’s “teeny-tiny” and it operates on its rotating offerings of brioche pastries, most famously the morning buns — a sweet sticky cinnamon roll filled with seasonal fruits or leaning on the savory side with maple bacon or dirty chai. It’s open only Friday through Sunday, from 7 a.m. to noon, closing earlier if the goodies sell out.

It’s truly a mom-and-pop shop, with only Bruhns and Morgan at the helm. They have no hired help. Bruhns waits on customers, bakes and cleans. Morgan runs the social media and business side of the bakery and maintains a full-time job as a lawyer.

The concept was born from a desire to establish a “hardware store” for brunch supplies, meaning the couple wanted to be a go-to place for neighbors to get freshly baked goods to supplement their weekend breakfast along with packaged items like milk, juice, butter and eggs. There’s no freshly brewed coffee or a place to sit down; it’s meant to be grab and go.

After an influencer created a reel about the bakery earlier this year, the business gained 600 Instagram followers in a week. But Brunch Supply built a fan base through word of mouth from neighbors. Bruhns said about 70% of his business is from regulars.

“We picked an amazing neighborhood,” he said. “We have, like, the best neighbors.”

Longtime Upper Fells resident Erica Crowley, a regular, has been going to Brunch Supply since its soft opening and learned about it when Bruhns visited neighboring bar Benders with samples.

“I love the weekly special buns,” Crowley said. “It’s fun seeing everyone come down the block each weekend with their pink box of goodies.”

As part of its attempt to mimic a traditional corner store, the location has ample natural light and evokes walking into someone’s home kitchen. The decor inside the bakery is minimal — a repurposing of the existing structures. The full glass mirror along their walls, painted in a baby blue, is a remnant of the bar from the old-time Van Gogh Cafe, which shuttered in 2023.

The main display and marble checkout counter is an addition from when Arepi (the popular Venezuelan arepa vendor that started its business at the Fell’s Point Farmers Market) took over the lease from Van Gogh before eventually opening closer to the water on Thames Street. There’s a vintage white oven at the entrance, a small selection of retail items that includes Bruhns’ father’s maple syrup, which Dave Bruhns will sap and bring down to Baltimore after the season from upstate New York, and a chalkboard for a “roll call” to see where patrons come from.

Bruhns bakes his pastries using a brioche recipe as sort of a mother dough from which he creates cinnamon rolls along with his babkas. Also on the menu: kolaches, which may excite Texas natives. Brunch Supply’s version differs from the circular Czech pastry often filled with stone fruit, soft cheese or kielbasa, however.

“We’re taking some creative liberties there,” Bruhns said, laughing, about his square brioche kolaches. “It’s not so far off, but maybe more in the vein of a Danish.”

With the demand for more savory items from patrons, one of the mainstays is a sausage roll, influenced by Morgan’s Irish heritage. The filling is made with breakfast blend sausage from Polish sausage makers Ostrowski of Bank Street, operating a block away, then wrapped in Irish puff pastry.

As Brunch Supply’s popularity has grown, pastries have been selling out earlier and earlier. So Bruhns created an online preordering system. While not everything will be listed online — there has to be some element of surprise when you walk into the sweet, yeasty-smelling store, he said — most of the popular items like scones, cinnamon rolls and babkas usually are.

The ethos of Brunch Supply is different from that of other bakeries that have found success recently in Baltimore. Café Dear Leon, this year’s James Beard Semifinalist for Outstanding Bakery, opened its second location in Remington last year, three times the size of its small rowhome in Canton, and expanded its hours and added more staff. Bruhns, however, is content to keep the status quo.

“We’re good where we are,” Bruhns said. “We’re just trying to make a living, not a killing.”