MOST LOVED
Breakfast/Brunch Spot Huckleberry Bakery & Cafe
2020
WINNER HUCKLEBERRY BAKERY & CAFE
“When in doubt brunch it out” goes the unofficial motto of Santa Monica on any given Saturday, where residents have no shortage of delectable breakfast spots to nurse off a hangover or dive into a fat stack of pancakes.
Most Loved 2020
Huckleberry Bakery & Cafe is the winner for the Most Loved award in Santa Monica. The director of communications for Huckleberry, Elise Freimuth describes the business as “a neighborhood bakery and cafe that offers coffee, sweet treats, breakfast items, savory sandwiches, salads and a wide variety of takeout items—all available throughout the day.” Huckleberry was the first restaurant opened by Zoe Nathan and her husband Josh Loeb after Nathan joined the Rustic Canyon team. Freimuth says that the “pastry case is piled high every morning with biscuits, muffins, scones, doughnuts, tarts, cookies, and more, while regulars line up for classics like our messy Fried Egg Sandwich, comforting Breakfast Burrito, stacks of Pancakes, healthy Quinoa Bowls and more.”
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Freimuth thanks the community for their loyalty and for their support during the pandemic. The bakery & cafe has always offered takeout and delivery, but in March at the beginning of the shutdown Huckleberry had to make a large pivot. Freimuth says “We essentially turned into a little corner market and cafe, offering pantry essentials like AP flour, sugar, baking mixes, cookie dough, bread, pastries, along with weekly Farmers’ Market boxes with organic eggs, rice, fruits, and veggies to support our favorite local farmers and purveyors. We began offering take & bake meals for breakfast and dinner, so families could pick up pancakes, scrambled eggs, bris-
1014 Wilshire Blvd.
ket, chicken, mac-n-cheese, re-packaged our deli salads, and soups into quarts, and more. We also now have curbside pickup in our back parking lot for those who want to really minimize contact.” Huckleberry has now re-opened for dinein, but it will be a slow recovery for the cafe until a vaccine is widely available. “Everyone’s safety is our number one priority, so how we operate is a fluid situation that we constantly monitor and adapt to. We’ve completely rearranged our dining room to allow for safe customer flow and ample distance between seating inside and out. That means having reduced capacity, and looking for more opportunities to offset those sales with things like takeout, delivery, catering, and selling gift cards.” Freimuth says that winning the Most Loved breakfast spot is a true demonstration of the loyalty of their customers. She says that the first thing her customers did when they first had to close the doors was to ask what they could do to help. Freimuth urges customers to support small businesses in any way possible: “It’s what has kept us going during this time and lifted our spirits. Small businesses are the fabric of this community and give Santa Monica its unique character, so programs that raise awareness like Most Loved are needed now more than ever. With travel limited for the foreseeable future, now is the time to rediscover your little neighborhood and support small, local businesses.” She is extremely grateful for the workers at Huckleberry and says “We can’t predict what will happen in the coming months, but we’ll be ready to get creative and pivot again so we can keep doing what we love.”
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