An Oakland bakery that popularized a marriage between Asian American flavors and carefully executed Viennoiserie (think black sesame kumquat buns and Thai tea croissants) will soon be opening its second store in Alameda.
The new Bake Sum location will be housed inside of Alameda Marketplace, in the space formerly occupied by Feel Good Bakery for 21 years. Opening day is scheduled for May 9, from 9am until pastries run out.
Last week, COYOTE’s Rahawa Haile spoke with Bake Sum owner Joyce Tang during her team’s first, official move-in day as they prepared to launch. (Full disclosure: COYOTE’s resident food critic Soleil Ho is Tang’s co-author on her forthcoming cookbook, which is why I, Rahawa, a longtime pastry lover/first-time pastry writer, initiated this conversation.)
The following interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Flavored conchas (left) and a yuzu meringue tart from Bake Sum, which is opening in Alameda, Calif. (Courtesy Aya Brackett/Hardie Grant)
Rahawa Haile: Hi Joyce. So what made you decide to open a second shop?
Joyce Tang: We lucked out in finding both a commissary and retail space that could support us. We were excited when we met the landlord and met the folks at the market. It felt like the right fit off the bat, and that doesn’t always happen.
RH: Why Alameda, and do you have a personal connection with the area?
JT: Recently, my godbrother threw his 40th birthday party at Alameda Brewing, and I was sitting on the patio enjoying lunch, and some beer, and thinking wow, this neighborhood is so nice. That was fall of 2025, so we’re talking 6–8 months ago, and I was like, yeah, Alameda’s great. It’s beautiful. And then I was, you know, poking around. Like, it would be great to be here. It was a very fleeting thought in my head — then this spot opened up.
RH:The Alameda vibes were strong, and rightly so.
JT: Very! And when you add an intelligent and forward-thinking landlord who thinks in the long term, that actually really helped solidify things for me, too. She was really generous in not charging us an arm and a leg for this space. It just made my job a lot easier to say yes when she said yes to us.
Donna Layburn is kind of the mastermind behind the Alameda Marketplace. She’d been negotiating with me and interviewing us among other bakeries for the space.
RH: And what do you want this new space to be like? Atmospherically? Functionally?
JT: The Oakland shop is 800 square feet, and there's only so much we can do in 800. [With the Alameda space], our goal is to be able to tie in the production with the proof, and the bake, and the customer experience a little more tightly. I'm excited just because we'll be able to laminate, mix, bake, proof, and engage with customers all in one space, and I think that makes the experience much richer.
We're going to have a little dough room inside the space that I'm working on getting air conditioning for. That way my bakers don't have to deal with the hot temps that we have in California now, and the butter won't melt anymore. We're still working on that piece of it, but having the cooler space to work in just makes all the difference for this kind of really temperature-sensitive pastry. This is my ideal in terms of controlling that environment for my team. It’s one less thing for them to worry about on a hot summer day, and they don't have to come in early. They don't have to work twice as fast. We can ensure that same quality experience kind of across the board.
The team (plus one cookbook author) at Bake Sum in Oakland, Calif. (Courtesy Aya Brackett/Hardie Grant)
RH: After nearly five years at the shop on Grand Ave, what have you learned about what people are looking for in a store like Bake Sum? In my experience, it's usually about much more than just the pastry, you know? From the moment one walks in.
JT: In the last five years, I think we've built a small platform for the Asian American community. Now that we're more of an established brand and location, and we bring in a lot of customers every single weekend, I do see Bake Sum as a platform to be shared with more folks, more creatives, and more makers.
In the last year or two, we've been much more cognizant of purchasing from local creatives and hosting them in our space. Sheena Wong, who has been really instrumental in growing that retail presence, has been meticulously hand sorting and meeting all the creatives in the Bay Area to find the ones that fit and jive with our store. Customers have been loving it. From the Heydoh soy sauce, to the BART magnets she brings in from Lemonade51o, to the really cute Le Bon Garçon caramels she'll source that have this really amazing packaging. Or even Slumptown from Kai Kwong — one of our favorite designers.
Our front of house is so in tune with our customers that they also know what they would like to see represented within the store.
It's, like, a healthy ecosystem where we can uplift more boats, metaphorically speaking, with what we've done, and also tell stories about the crazy pastries that are on our menu, and where we get all our ingredients, and why we would put such things into a pastry. We've been trying to just go deeper and deeper through the last couple of years, and I've been continuously learning and getting my butt kicked in the business world along the way, too.
From left: a halo halo croissant bun, okonomiyaki danishes, and a Spam-filled Croissubi from Bake Sum in Oakland, Calif. (Courtesy Aya Brackett/Hardie Grant)
RH: Can you say a bit more about those rabbit holes and the avenues of exploration that have really piqued your interest?
JT: Well, writing a cookbook with Soleil was super fun! I've been trying to keep creative on Tuesdays by doing mini pop-ups at Bake Sum, where I kind of throw out experimental pastries that I wanna make to see if we can scale them up for Alameda or if they need to just be a fun thing we play with on Tuesdays.
Ari [Daoheuang] and I have been ping-ponging back and forth with our creative Tuesdays. She's made a Thai tea cake with pandan cream, and I've been doing pavlovas, and like, warabimochi, and getting more in touch with some other fun ingredients that we couldn't do at our typical volume.
It’s prohibitive sometimes to offer new things, because I don't know that people realize how many hundreds of croissants we make every single week.
RH: Do you do the thing where you think of the math in terms of croissants? Like, “How many croissants will it cost to do X?”
JT: Yes, I do. Every time I buy something, I have to think about how many croissants it would cost. I've been doing a ton of croissant math, and the quotes that I've been getting from some of the handymen for the new bakery are ridiculous. I was quoted $300–$400 a square foot for the build-out that I'm doing in Alameda, and then I was quoted $80,000, and another guy quoted me $160,000 and I was like wow, you guys are really just pulling numbers out of thin air.
RH: Of course. Well, thanks for the chat, Joyce. I’m looking forward to seeing the Alameda shop.
JT: You too! Toodles!
Bake Sum will open its new location on May 9, 2026 inside the Alameda Marketplace, 1650 Park St., Alameda, CA. Hours: 9am until sell-out.
Rahawa Haile is an Eritrean American writer from Miami, Florida. Her work covers arts & culture, borders, and the outdoors. In Open Country, her blended memoir about the Appalachian Trail and the politics of free movement in the US, is forthcoming.
