Little Rock

Dempsey Bakery

by: Catherine McCraw

Address: 323 S Cross St, Little Rock, AR 72201

Phone number: (501) 375-2257

Email: paula@dempseybakery.com

Website: https://www.dempseybakery.com/

Hours:

Tuesday - Friday: 10 A.M. - 5 P.M.

Saturday: 9 A.M. - 1 P.M.

Dempsey Bakery is a bakery that I have gone to for many years. The bakery is completely gluten, wheat, soy and nut-free.

The bakery has a nice layout with neat display cases and plenty of tables to sit at (pictured above). The staff is very helpful and there are labels on all of their food. This makes it very easy to determine what is in the food and if you are able to have it.

Many of their products are also dairy-free and/or egg-free, and have different colored stickers to indicate that they are. This setup makes it very easy to navigate the bakery as someone with food allergies.

They also make cakes, cupcakes and pies to order. There is a freezer full of ready to bake items that can be bought as well as mixes.

Dempsey Bakery has a lunch menu as well as baked goods. Over the years I have had a lot of their baked goods.

Some of my favorites include their cinnamon rolls, chocolate cupcakes and pumpkin bread (pictured above). I recently had lunch there. I had a sandwich and chips (pictured above). The sandwich was made on bread that is free of the top 9 allergens.

Dempsey partners with many local restaurants by providing them with their fresh baked bread.

Interview with Chef:

What steps do you take to accommodate people with food allergies?

Everything here is, of course, gluten, nut and soy free.

We go all the way back to every ingredient that we purchase to use in the bakery. We go back to the manufacturer and get statements to make sure that they are processed in a nut free facility and a gluten free facility.

If they happen to use soy, we ask what their cleaning processes are and that they do clean regularly before they use gluten-free items. We make sure that all the way back to where it was made is gluten nut and soy free.

When we're here, we always change our gloves. We also cover egg and dairy free options, and corn free options. I think we have one or two potato free options because we have a couple of potato allergy people. We just make sure we are very careful about not cross-contamination.

What foods on the menu are safe for all nine allergens?

We don’t have gluten, nuts, soy, egg, and dairy. We don't use any of the fish, the shellfish, the sesame seeds. We stay away from those as well.

We have crackers, our bread that we make sandwiches on. Those are free of all those things. I know some people consider coconut a tree nut. Some people don't. We only have, I believe two items have coconut. But we do have many options that have all of those things free. A lot of our desserts, we can do cake, we can do cookies that are free of all those things.

Have you been to Dempsey Bakery? Planning to go? Feel free to leave your own thoughts in the comment section of this article and/or ask questions about the bakery, and we will try our best to answer!