The Ginger’s Bread & Co. officially opens June 4th at 1613 Union Avenue.
“It’s a bakery,” says Jimmy Hoxie, 43, who owns the establishment with his husband, Grant Whittle. “We have sourdough, challah, croissants, tarts, cookies and cookies and cookies.”
But that’s not what “Ginger” refers to. Instead, Hoxie says, it’s “like someone who has red hair. Like I do.”
Ginger’s Bread is more than a bakery. “We’ve also got some gallery space and a few jewelers and candle makers who are going to set up some spots in there. It’s going to be a little market.”
Hoxie is a natural for the business. “I’ve been baking and cooking since I was a kid with my mom and my grandmother.”
And, he adds, “The cooking shows were my Saturday cartoons.”
Baking didn’t come naturally for him at first, though. “I can remember lots of disasters as a kid.” He would make things that turned out “not really for human consumption. Like baking a batch of cookies and forgetting to put extract in it and trying to brush it on afterwards. It’s not quite the same.”
But, he says, “You learn from your mistakes and you just keep going.”
He also got great feedback from The Lauderdale County Enterprise owner, editor, and publisher Terry Ford, who, like Hoxie’s grandmother, lived in Ripley, Tennessee. “He was an avid cookbook collector and gourmand and friend of Julia Child. He brought Julia to Ripley once, and I got to meet her.”
Ford told Hoxie, who helped him cook for his annual July 4th parties, “You’ve got some skill and you should look into this.”
After graduating from Ridgeway High School, Hoxie went to culinary school at Johnson and Wales University in Charleston, South Carolina. He worked in between semesters at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort and Spa, “as a cook, but [I also did] anything else that needed to be done.”
Following graduation, he worked at The Mills House Wyndham Grand Hotel in Charleston. Moving back to Memphis, his jobs included Viking Culinary Art School and Memphis Jewish Home & Rehab before working at Bonne Terre Country Inn & Café in Southaven. He also worked at Just for Lunch, Church Health, Sur La Table, The Liquor Store, City & State, and the cafe at Crosstown Arts.
After the pandemic shut everything down, Hoxie thought, “If I was going to start doing something on my own, now is the time.”
Hoxie and Whittle started an online “porch and pick-up” baking business, The Ginger’s Bread, after they converted half of a duplex they owned into a kitchen.
They moved into their current location after they outgrew the duplex. “We wanted to be in Midtown because there’s not really a bread bakery in Midtown. Certainly not where you can get a fresh croissant.”
They loved the space. “It was built circa 1930 and still has a little charm left to it. It has the feel of the 1930s, but it also has the feel of all the eras up to today. I found some old store display cases that are circa 1930s, ’40s.
“My brother and I drove all over picking up stuff and shoving it in the back of U-Hauls and figuring out how to get it off the van and into the shop as best we can.”
As for the color scheme? “We’ve got a really rich teal and then wood and burnt orange accents.”
He includes a range of new and fondly recalled baked goods. “A lot of people remember my stuff from City & State, and they wanted their old favorites they used to eat there,” Hoxie says.
That includes his pimento cheese cornmeal scones and stuffed pretzels with nuts and apple pie filling.
They have “a few tables,” but they don’t want The Ginger’s Bread & Co. to be a restaurant at his point. “We want people to enjoy their time while they’re there, but we want people to grab what they want and go.”
Future plans may include building out the space to add a commercial kitchen. And maybe one day they will open a restaurant.
And, yes, they sell gingerbread men. Hoxie makes the classic cookie, but he’ll be doing others. “For Elvis Week, I’ll do a little Elvis-shaped one.”
Courtesy Piano Man Pictures 
Courtesy Piano Man Pictures 
Courtesy Piano Man Pictures 
Courtesy Piano Man Pictures 
Courtesy Piano Man Pictures