Downtown Cullman’s restaurant landscape is on the rise, thanks to the upcoming launch of a new local bakery that promises to leaven local options for taking home freshly-made bread, donuts, and more.

Owners of 412 Public House are expanding beyond beer, burgers, and the ebullient brunch and dinner scene at their busy Second Avenue restaurant, spreading their footprint to the building next door with The Historic Bakery, which is set to open this summer.

A take-out-only bakery with an emphasis on daily freshly-made food and convenience, The Historic Bakery will expand the food vibe that 412 brings to the block, occupying the former Bark-Ley building that frames the alleyway facing the existing restaurant.

Co-owner Trey Jordan said the new bakery aims to establish its own niche by filling some underserved demands among the city’s locally-owned food offerings, while putting its own stamp on familiar oven-fresh favorites.

“Everything we’ll make will be all-original recipes,” said Jordan. “Brittany Miller, our pastry chef, is really amazing at putting a really high-quality touch on anything that comes out of an oven. She has a background with [Birmingham-based] Edgar’s Bakery, and she’ll anchor our menu.

“We’re still working out what the final version of that will look like, but one thing we’d really like to do is to start making bread — just fresh-baked bread, like the kind you can’t just get from the store,” he added. “We’ll have our own donut recipe, as well as original recipes for everything we offer. There’ll be cakes for sure as well — Brittany’s a wizard with cakes. We’re still discussing some other things too, and nothing’s final, but we’re also looking at things like coffee, maybe pies, and, of course, the fresh-baked bread.”

Announced on the same day that Cullman’s Duchess bakery — famous for its melt-in-your-mouth donuts — revealed its new ownership, The Historic Bakery isn’t positioning to take a bite out of established competition, said Jordan. Rather, he and co-owners Stephen Gannon and Rico Nishimura view the project as a rising-tide endeavor; one that helps lift people’s interest in local food culture.

“We want everyone to succeed,” he said. “The idea isn’t to go head to head and take anything away from anybody else; it’s the opposite — to get more people downtown by showing them even more places to check out. With everything that’s grown in this area in the past few years, we want this area to be a kind of destination; a place that gives people the sense that there’s a real culture to what Cullman’s got going on.”

With interior renovations currently underway, the bakery is on track for what Jordan hopes will be an August debut. Stay tuned in to the bakery’s Instagram account @thehistoricbakery, and follow 412’s Facebook page @412publichouse for updates as opening day draws near.

Benjamin Bullard can be reached by phone at 256-734-2131 ext. 234.