Draft of Grateful Bread Feature Story

by Camara McLaughlin

It’s feast night at Grateful Bread Baking Company, and owner Teresa Mackey is rushing about.
“We’re in the weeds,” she says as she hurriedly grates the fennel that, along with fresh oranges, will star in tonight’s spinach salad.
It’s been one of those days. An oven is broken. It has been on all afternoon, and has only gotten to 283 degrees. Not hot enough to toast walnuts or roast turnips. Both of which are needed for tonight’s dishes.
It is hard to imagine how the kitchen would feel if one more oven was up to its proper temperature. This small space is hot.
And crowded. Silver pots and pans are stacked above and around the dishwashing pit. All have dents and blemishes, marks of a well-loved piece of equipment. Tupperware containers are piled one on top of the other near the food prep stations. Convenient for storing food, but a lid or two is missing.
Giant sacks of stone ground whole wheat flour are piled near the door. A towering metal shelf holds cans and boxes of food in sizes only restaurants can buy. Soymilk, kidney beans, roasted red peppers and pumpkin, just to name a few. Recipes and notes of encouragement are tacked to a small corkboard like the well loved mementos they are. A gluten free cookbook completes the organized chaos so often found in crowded restaurant kitchens.
Soup is bubbling on one of the many burners, and there is talk of the sweet potato gnocchi to be made. The myriad of scents mix in the humid air, like a custom blended, mouthwatering perfume. Dinner is going to be good.
The beginning
Teresa and her husband, who is co-owner, but doesn’t actually work at the restaurant, opened Grateful Bread in March of 2000.
“Which is amazing,” Teresa notes. A decade is a long time for any restaurant.
Teresa is from High Point, so she knew what the restaurant scene in the city was like.
“There was nothing like this in High Point,” she says.
From the start, Grateful Bread has always been open for lunch six days a week. They added brunch on Saturdays, and in the past year, have added Tuesday night soup night, and Thursday night feast night.
Living close to the dirt
Lunch has a set menu, with some daily specials and sides.
Lunchtime at Grateful Bread Baking Company in High Point, N.C. is always bustling. Customers begin to filter in around eleven am, but the forty seat restaurant really starts filling up around noon. By 12:30, the place is usually full; every one of the twelve tables occupied.
Mackey supports local “slow food” movements. She buys as much produce, cheese and meat from local farmers as possible. These days, this type of green cuisine is a selling point to customers, so Mackey makes sure to advertise Grateful Bread’s cause.
On the front door, there are a variety of stickers proclaiming support for organic and locally grown products.
The closer a product is grown to the place it is being sold, the tastier it is. Why? Since a product doesn’t have to travel as far to reach its final destination, it can be picked when it is in the peak of freshness, rather than before it is fully ripe. Often the produce we see in supermarkets has been harvested before it is truly ready, and has been made to ripen on the truck.
Customers notice the fresh flavor of the food.
Such as Eliza Walmsley, a 21 year old High Point University senior from Ridgeway, Va.
She’s been coming to Grateful Bread since she was in high school—Ridgeway is about an hour from High Point. Her neighbor, whose job with Basset Mirror Company out of nearby Martinsville, Va. brings her to furniture market week, would have Eliza help her set up for pre-market. Lunchtime would always be at Grateful Bread.
“It was my neighbor’s get-away spot,” Eliza says.
What’s Eliza’s favorite meal?
“I love the egg salad,” she says. “Everything is good, but I just keep coming back to that sandwich.”
When Eliza began coming to HPU for college, she of course had to continue frequenting the bakery. She loves that the food is healthy, unlike the many chicken and biscuit places that populate High Point, but still so full of flavor.
At Grateful Bread, healthy does not equal tasteless.
What’s in a name
As the name Grateful Bread suggests, the restaurant is not an uptight place. The interior of the restaurant is colorful, with orangey pink walls, green trim and knick knacks galore.
When you first enter the space, the counter where you order your food is straight ahead. It too is painted orange, with the green and white logo on the front. Above is a black and white striped awning, making the counter look like a European bistro.
The main attraction of the entrance though, is the food.
On the left is a counter with all of the different breads. All baked fresh every morning. There is even a plate with selected slices of breads, butter and jelly. Free to any who enter.
As a bakery, this place does more than just bread. Straight ahead, gleaming like pieces of forbidden treasure, from behind a Plexiglas case, are the baked goods. S’mores bars, derby bars, lemon bars, savory scones like bacon and blue cheese, muffins, in flavors like blueberry lemon and apple walnut, gluten free cranberry orange cookies, on and on and on. Just one look and your mouth will be watering like Pavlov’s dog.
Variety is the spice of life
Grateful Bread’s customer base is as varied as the décor.
A middle aged man eats a turkey and havarti sandwich while talking on his Bluetooth. Judging from his black dress pants and shoes, blue shirt and sweater vest, he’s on break from an office job. His Blackberry and a pair of reading glasses lie on the rustic wooden table at which he’s eating.
A young woman in UGG boots and cropped yoga pants orders at the counter. Her green and white floral bag almost clashing with her gray and cream hooded sweatshirt.
Two women, probably in their 30’s sit at one of the retro looking tables. With its silver ridged top and black and silver chairs, it looks like it is straight out of the 1950s.
The two women do not. One looks like she just came from the office. The other from a tennis match. Are they the modern “ladies who lunch?”
“We might look like a little hippie shop, but we don’t just serve hippies,” Teresa says. Everyone enjoys good food.