They Won! Named #1! GUNCLES: Gluten Free Bakery Rising to the Top from Mobile, AL to USA Today “Readers’ Choice” Contest for National Top Ten Bakeries
GUNCLES WON-Ranked #1 by USA TODAY !
Mobile is known for many things: it is the birthplace of Mardi Gras, despite New Orleans vast marketing enterprise; it is the oldest city in Alabama, founded by the French in 1872; and it is an oyster lover’s paradise — anyway you want them from flaming and smothered in cheese to Rockefeller with spinach — oysters abound in Mobile.
But Mobile also has a huge stain on its history; the Mobile River is the final resting place of the last slave ship that bought and brought 110 human beings to Mobile, AL as live cargo (human trafficking) to be enslaved and fulfill a slave owner’s bet, fifty (50) years after slavery had ended in the United States and was declared illegal.
That history is now highly visible with the publication of anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston’s nonfiction book on Cudjoe (Kossola), who she described as “the last African” in Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo.”, and the 2022 Netflix documentary “Descendant”.
Who would imagine that a gluten free bakery might add to Mobile’s notoriety and put it on a national map for baking?
That is precisely what GUNCLES (Gluten Free Uncles and also stands for Gay Uncles) is doing. It is currently ranked number 2 out of the top 10 (down from the original 20) in the USA Reader’s Choice News Best Gluten Free Bakery in the Nation (https://bit.ly/voteguncles). This little ole gluten-free bakery in Mobile is rising up and making headlines.
GUNCLES is a creative culinary response to those folk who have a gluten (wheat) intolerance, but still want to eat their pastries — and have them taste delicious.
The small business in Mobile, AL is the brainchild of Demetrius James and John Edward McGee, partners in work and life. They have been married for ten years and together for thirty.
The rationale for starting GUNCLES was health related. John Edward has a rare disease that makes him subject to apoplectic shock, if he consumes gluten — similar to what some people with peanut allergies experience. The slightest exposure can be life threatening.
Thus, GUNCLES’ kitchen is a dedicated gluten-free environment with no possibility of cross contamination.
For this reason, and the fact that its pastries are derived from recipes invented through trial and error and adapted from family recipes of aunts, uncles, mothers, and grandmothers.
GUNCLES draws its customers locally and from all across the country, providing comfort food without the dangers. Not bad for two people who never trained professionally as bakers or pastry chefs.
They both tell stories of customers crying (and giving them big hugs) at being able to eat one of their top-selling oatmeal cream pies or tasting their biscuits — baked fresh every day — after years of being unable to touch the comfort food of home.
Today, GUNCLES’ baked goods are available along the Gulf Coast in hotels, stores and restaurants — the latter being those places committed to catering to customers who need gluten-free food; the owners investigate very carefully before they partner with anyone — maintaining their high standards for gluten free environments.
On my recent return to Bama, I dropped in for coffee and my biscuits, and caught up the two owners to see what was brewing besides their great coffee.
Dr. Irma:
When you started this bakery, did you imagine it would take off?
DJ: We started this in 2016 and we had absolutely no idea that it would take off the way it has, especially in the South, particularly in Mobile, AL for a gluten free bakery to be as successful as ours has been.
Dr. Irma: What was your greatest fear, and what has been your greatest reward?
DJ: The greatest fear was (and still is) that we were going to open and invest a substantial amount of our savings into this bakery that was a concept that was not even being considered in Mobile, so the fear was failure; that it wasn’t going to work. But because we are determined that we are NOT going to fail, we used failure and the fear of failure to drive us to make it more successful.
Dr. Irma: John Edward, what has been your greatest rewards?
JE: I think the greatest rewards, and there have been so many, obviously enjoying our creations and presenting them to the public . But really the greatest has been our customers reactions to our products. We have experienced so many different emotional reactions.
People have stood here and cried because they had not had a cinnamon roll in ten years. We’ve had people ask to give us a hug because the biscuits remind them of the biscuits they grew up with their grandmother. We love creating memories.
Dr. Irma: I understand you make a gluten-free King cakes for Mardi Gras? How successful has that been?
DJ: Oh my gosh.
JE: Our king cake is a brioche-based king cake with several different flavor options; the most popular is the cinnamon with cream-cheese frosting. We also have strawberry and blueberry, and they have been very well received. We have people who drive hours to get our king cakes, and this year we actually stopped taking orders two weeks before Mardi Gras because we needed to make sure we could fulfill all our orders.
GUNCLES says there is no place else that makes a gluten-free king cake like their’s, and mostly because, as mentioned previously, they are a dedicated bakery with no possibilities or cross contamination, which is very important to them.
With a staff of family (Tamica, the general manager is Demetrius’ sister), their own pastry chef, a cheerful staff, other secrets the two delicately declined to disclose (including no photos of the kitchen), and currently ranked №2 nationally in USA Today’s contest, GUNCLES is poised for even greater success — as they keep rising and bringing diverse visibility to Mobile and Gulf Coast. .
This author is fortunate, since GUNCLES is only a 15 minute walk from my Mobile residence. Sweet…and gluten free!
Voting is open until Monday, October 15; you can vote everyday and on multiple devices: https://bit.ly/voteguncles.
To order: https://bit.ly/gunclesorder.
Follow them: ING: @gunclesglutenfree
TikTok: @gunclesglutenfree
Meta: Guncles gluten free
X (Twitter): @Gunclesgf
© 2023 Irma McClaurin; all photos by author and are copyrighted.
Irma McClaurin (https://linktr.ee/dr.irma/ @mcclaurintweets) is the Culture and Education Editor for Insight News and founder of the Irma McClaurin Black Feminist Archive at UMass. An activist Black Feminist anthropologist, she is a past president of Shaw University, founding Executive Director of the University of Minnesota’s UROC, and has held numerous other leadership positions. McClaurin completed the MFA in English and PhD in Anthropology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and in 2023 was awarded the Honorary Doctorate of Social Studies by her alma mater, Grinnell College. Her book Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis and Poetics was named an “Outstanding Academic Title” in 2002 and the Black Press of America selected her as “Best in the Nation Columnist” in 2015. She is a consultant and coach and is on the Advisory Board of the newly established Center for Diaspora and Migration Studies (CDMS) at the University of Liberia. A collection of her columns, Justspeak: Reflections on Race, Culture &Politics in America, is forthcoming in 2023, and she working on a book-length manuscript about Zora Neale Hurston as an anthropologist.
