by TM Petaccia

Charlotte’s bakery boom has produced everything from French patisseries and artisanal sourdough shops to Latin American panaderías. But traditional Ashkenazi Jewish baking — the bagels, rugelach, hamantaschen, babka, and black-and-white cookies that anchor so many New York bakeries — has remained relatively scarce. A relatively new ghost kitchen pickup and catering bakery called Metzger’s is changing that.

Run by Charlotte native Carlie Sauer and her Queens-born uncle, Lonnie Sauer, Metzger’s currently operates out of Carolina Commercial Kitchen, off Wendover Road, producing classic Eastern European Jewish pastries and breads for online orders, catering clients, and a small number of restaurant partners.

For Lonnie Sauer, a long-time entreprenuer, the idea for the business started with an oft-heard frustration from those who grew up in the Northeast. “I just got tired of not having a lot of the access to the things that I wanted that I knew Carly could make,” he says. “And I thought, ‘Okay, well, if you’re making it, let’s turn this into a business.'”

The bakery’s name is an homage to Lonnie Sauer’s grandmother, Carlie’s great-grandmother. Metzger was her maiden name. It’s her recipes that form the basis of many of the traditional breads and pastries on the menu.

Carlie Sauer grew up in Charlotte but spent plenty of time visiting New York, where the family made regular pilgrimages to the bakeries Lonnie knew from childhood. At home, she began recreating those flavors herself. First out of curiosity and then out of passion. She is completely self-taught. “I watched a lot of Food Network,” she says.

Like many startup businesses, what started out as a hobby and become a full-time profession. “I would give them to my family and friends, and they would say, ‘You should start selling this,'” she says. So with her uncle, she launched Metzger’s in January 2025, starting in a small commercial kitchen, eventually expanding to the larger quarters at CCK.

“Once we got into a full commercial space, having a commercial mixer, having a commercial oven, and working a whole different space, we said, ‘this is it,'” Carlie Sauer says. Once they settled in, they began honing Grandma Metzger’s recipes to suit larger volumes of production. “We began looking at hydration levels, special flour blends, and found the right recipes,” she says.

Although Charlotte has seen a number of bagel shops and popup businesses over the past few years, Metzger’s sets itself apart by offering a full line of Eastern European Ashkenazi baked goods. “Bagels are our core,” says Lonnie, “but the pastries we’ve been adding one-by-one.”

Metzger’s most popular bagels are the most traditional: plain, salt, egg, sesame, and everything. “People are obsessed with our salt bagels,” Carrie says. Depending on the week, they also offer cinammon-raisin and blueberry bagels, as well as more non-traditional takes, such as jalapeño-cheddar and asiago. “We’re soon coming out with a pumpernickel bagel,” Lonnie says. To complement the bagels, the business offers a number of house-blended cream cheese options.

The bakery’s sweet options will bring smiles to most New York and Northeast expatriates, including black-and-white cookies and rugelach. This week, for the Jewish holiday of Purim, they are offering the triangular filled pastry hamantaschen.

“We’re probably going to keep those year-round,” Carlie says. “They’ve gotten a tremendous response.”

Carlie Sauer has also come up with what she hopes will be a new tradition: her babka cookies, essentially a brown butter cookie with a chocolate fudge swirl. “It’s not anything close to traditional, but it’s just a fun spin on a classic,” she says.

Future plans include adding New York deli-style rye and pumpernickel breads, plus smoked fish.

To date, most of Metzger’s business comes from retail pre-order via the bakery’s website plus catering. “We do a lot of work with the JCC (Jewish Community Center ), Temple Beth El, and Temple Israel,” Lonnie says. “Carlie also does cakes at Temple Israel, using their kosher kitchen.”

In addition, Metzger’s is suppling the pastries for Rob Clement’s Meshugganah deli ghost kitchen as well as an item definitely not Ashkenazi, focaccia, for Optimist Hall’s ESO Artisanal Pasta. “Carlie makes an unbelievable focaccia,” Lonnie says. “We reached out to them and now we supply them with fresh focaccia seven days a week.” They’ve also done collaboration projects with Enderly Coffee and Zämbies Pizza.

For now, Metzger’s operates mostly behind the scenes, but the Sauers say a traditional storefront is firmly on the horizon. “Brick and mortar is definitely in the plans,” Carlie says. The goal is a shop where customers can walk in any day of the week for bagels, breads, pastries, and coffee, something the current production model doesn’t easily allow.

“I’m looking at the end of this year to have something open,” Lonnie says. “I like the neighborhood we’re in (Oakhurst) or possibly NoDa, but we just have to see how we grow and develop.”

Until then, Metzger’s will continue building its following one batch at a time; one 1 a.m. shift at a time, combining family recipes and New York bakery traditions with Charlotte’s growing food community.

“We always like to say that we have good problems,” Carlie Sauer says. “We’ve gotten such amazing response.”