Sunflower Bakery — Restaurant in Durham

My initial visit to Sunflower Bakery was SO PLEASANT. I had a few canoncitos (my favorite) and a few other yummy pastries. The very kind woman even threw in a few pastries on the house.

My second visit here recently did upset me though. I’d stopped in to study some materials, and grabbed a cafe latte and one canoncito. I sat for a while studying, and realized I needed a pen for some footnote scribbling. I grabbed my keys to get a pen from my car, but then realized there were pens at the counter. The young lady that served me, was in the kitchen with the door closed. I grabbed a pen from a jar of pens directly next to a tip jar. As I walked back to the table, the young lady who was in the back, opened the door and came out asking if I need anything. I showed her the pen and let her know that I grabbed one. As I sat back down, I immediately heard what sounded like coins being jingled around and the register being opened.

In my gut, it felt very personal. For her to leave me a customer unattended, and then infer that I touched a tip jar or took any money was very obvious.

I sat for a minute and sorted through whether I was being dramatic or whether I had a reason to feel offended. And I’ll definitely go with offended and feelings of discrimination.

As a person of color that day, I weighed my options of a study spot between commercialized giant Starbucks, or a local small bakery owned by people of color. It’s a disappointment to be made to feel like this at my final choice. I love supporting local small businesses and do so as much as possible. Durham has a beautiful community of many different races and cultures.

As I processed what I just experienced, I decided to leave and not spend any business here again. This time I got up, made plenty of noise so that she could hear In the back that I was coming back to the counter to return the pen.

She came out again asking if I need anything and reassured her that I was just putting the pen back and showed her what I had in my hand. She said ok and for some reason, felt the need to reiterate that she was just making sure I was good. I said that I was fine and she bid me a good evening.

I won’t be returning and it’s unfortunate. No one should be made to feel like that. Some training on discrimination, bias, and perception needs to be had. Unless that’s just the way the...

Hey, my name is Swastik and we ordered a custom 6 inch four layer cake for me and my mom's birthday. My side had strawberry and my moms had mango and cream.

First off, I want to say that their customer service and decoration skills are both top notch. We had a lot of confusion at first about how we wanted to order the cake, but through Instagram we ironed out all the details and the final product of the decoration was exactly as we desired. The cake was ready on time too which is a neat bonus.

That being said, while I cant speak for the rest of my family, I disliked the taste of the cake itself. The main problem I had with it was that it tasted overwhelmingly like cream and sugar, even the fruit fillings were barely fruity. The frosting tasted too plain, I would have appreciated at least some more vanilla flavoring. The white part of the cake was dry and tasted mostly like sugar as well. We ordered a tres leches cake but unfortunately the cake did not contain the tres leches as we requested. I can forgive messing that up, mistakes happen on the job and thats ok. I would maybe just recommend making the cake itself less dry and more flavorful whether or not you do tres leches.

We went to the store to pick up the cake, the store was very neat and they even gave us a free cake slice with actual tres leches in it. The cake slice was wet on the bottom and dry on the top (maybe it would be better to have it be soaked from top to bottom).

Overall I would say I recommend their place if you'd like some of their other offerings. One cake and one experience doesnt necessarily represent the restaurant as a whole, and also since the customer service was so good ill bump it to 4 stars...

I did a fairly decent research to find a custom cake for my wife who was celebrating her 60th birthday. This was a very special moment for us and I really wanted to do something different from what I normally do. Obviously taste and quality is always at the top of the list, but ordering a custom design cake suggests going for the "WOW" factor to say the least. I am hoping Dani see's this review and grows from it. This is a wonderful family owned Bakery and everything I've purchased was absolutely delicious! Dani was super pleasant and very helpful. The bakery was very clean and had a wonderful welcoming feel when first walking in. I initially reached out to Dani on their Instagram page and asked if they could make a custom cake in the time that I needed, they absolutely did. I looked at the cake menu and decided on a white cake with flan filling because my wife absolutely loves flan. I was so excited. What really got me excited was when I saw a cake they made for a woman celebrating her 92nd birthday I thought, this is the perfect design and this is what I wanted for my wife. The theme was "Chanel" and since my wife loves Chanel perfume, shoes and really loves handbags, I thought it would be great to incorporate those things in the cakes design. I had no budget on what I wanted to spend. I only wanted this cake to look amazing, which unfortunately, for what this cake cost it did not! I have to take part in this because maybe I didn't ask the right questions and my expectations were unrealistic as to what this bakery was capable of, so having said that, if you are going to order a similar cake, it would be wise to lay out your expectations and discuss in details before...