It’s been a big year for Courtney Buckley, owner of Your Mom’s Donuts. She opened another small shop in Park Road Shopping Center in September, then set up shop in Davidson inside of Carolina Craft Butchery, running production for both out of the original Your Mom’s Donuts location in Matthews. As of January 1, she took over Carolina Artisan Bread from Bill Logan so he could retire.

Buckley and her team will use Logan’s original recipes to continue producing his breads, slowly ramping up production over the coming weeks and maintaining a presence at the farmers markets Logan took part in. Joseph Casavona, who acted as a general manager at Your Mom’s Donuts before Buckley purchased Carolina Artisan Bread, is shifting into a role where he’ll oversee all of the baking production. He has a background in breads, so the move is natural for him.

“When the opportunity came up it was sort of a no-brainer to take it on,” Buckley says. She’s looking at a bigger commercial kitchen space, too, where the team can do all of the bread and doughnut production. She expects the breads to hit markets in Davidson and South End this weekend. Eventually, you’ll be able to purchase the bread anywhere you can purchase the donuts.

Buckley is one to let opportunities present themselves and happen, and after they do, she takes advantage of them, yet takes things day by day.

“I like to dive into things and let them unfold,” she says. “I’m great at putting out fires, but I really suck at preventing them.”

She doesn’t let the fires stress her out, though, instead adjusting and moving forward. The long-term plans for Carolina Artisan Bread include expanding the wholesale production, as Your Mom’s Donuts is already staffed seven days a week. Casavona will also eventually come up with some new breads to add to the lineup, and down the road, Buckley hopes to begin selling local meat as well. She’s been spending time learning butchery from Lee Menius at Carolina Craft Butchery, and hopes to get to the point where she can sell local meat, donuts, and bread all under one bodega-esque roof.

“I kind of see old-school bread bakers and butchers and all of that stuff as a dying art,” Buckley says, calling butchery a passion project. “If you can bring it all back so it’s all under one umbrella, it’s one thing that makes shopping easier.”

She insists she’s been put on a buying freeze for 2019, though she has plenty to keep her and her staff busy. And it’s that staff, she says, that’s let her expand her empire so rapidly.

“I have a really, really good staff,” she says. “I have people that I can trust with making decisions and I know that they understand what my vision is and they see it, too. I think that is the number one thing that keeps me going. There’s no way I could do it without them.” —Kristen Wile

 

 

 

 

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