Edgar’s Bakery

Edgar’s Bakery began in Birmingham, Alabama in 1998, when Terry and Dottie Smith opened a small neighborhood shop built around quality ingredients and attentive service. Terry has described the decision to start the bakery as something closer to a calling than a business plan, and nearly three decades later the shop’s Birmingham roots still anchor a family-run business that has grown carefully rather than chasing rapid expansion. The bakery has since built its production around a scratch kitchen model, meaning cakes and pastries are made from base ingredients on site rather than assembled from pre-made mixes.

That growth eventually led to eleven locations across Alabama, stretching from Birmingham to Huntsville, Tuscaloosa, Hoover, Homewood, Trussville, Pelham, and Madison, including three within Birmingham’s city limits: one downtown at the Financial Center on 20th Street North, one at the Shops of the Colonnade off Highway 280, and one in the Cadence Place development. Despite the expansion, Dottie Smith has said the family will never grow for growth’s sake, choosing instead to keep an open ear to what customers actually want.

The bakery’s best-known product is its Signature Strawberry Cake, a layer cake that has become closely associated with the Edgar’s name across Alabama. Alongside it, the case regularly features playful, seasonally themed cakes such as an All American Birthday Cake and a Watermelon Cake styled to look like an actual watermelon slice, plus a Cookie Sandwich and a Strawberry Cheesecake for customers who want something smaller than a full cake. The wider menu also includes cupcakes and petit fours for parties that need individually portioned desserts rather than a single sheet or layer cake.

The downtown Financial Center location, at 505 20th Street North, keeps a tighter schedule than some of the bakery’s suburban shops, open Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. and closed on weekends. Custom cake orders, including wedding cakes, are handled through the bakery’s online ordering system, and because cakes are made to order, planning ahead is worthwhile for birthdays, showers, and other events, though some standard cakes and pastries can be ready for pickup in as little as fifteen minutes. For customers outside Alabama, Edgar’s also ships select items nationwide through a Goldbelly partnership, and a loyalty program rewards regular customers with points toward future purchases.

All Edgar’s Bakery locations share a single phone number, 205-987-0790, a small operational detail that reflects the business’s roots as a tightly run family company even as it has scaled across the state. Petit fours, one of the smaller items on the menu, are bite-sized cakes cut into squares and finished with a poured icing, a European tradition that gives the case something between a cupcake and a full slice for guests who want just a taste. Between those small format desserts and the flagship Signature Strawberry Cake, the bakery covers a wide range of portion sizes for everything from a quick afternoon treat to a full party order.

As a family owned and locally owned business that also offers takeout, Edgar’s has kept its Birmingham roots even as the Smiths built it into an eleven-location company. For visitors working downtown or passing through Birmingham’s financial district on a weekday morning, the Financial Center shop offers a quick, dependable stop for cake by the slice or a full custom order, carrying forward the same recipes the Smiths started with in 1998. Beyond the Financial Center, Birmingham residents also have the Shops of the Colonnade and Cadence Place locations to choose from, so a visitor staying near Highway 280 or on the other side of the city is not limited to the downtown shop’s shorter weekday-only schedule. Whichever location a visitor chooses, ordering online ahead of time is generally the more reliable way to guarantee a specific cake is ready when needed, especially heading into a weekend with birthdays or showers on the calendar.