Sweet Missions — Restaurant in Plant City

A detour from Jimmy John's led to another Plant City gem.

I was headed to Jimmy John's to grab a quick bite while running errands.At the corner of my eye, I saw a sign for a new restaurant. I love finding hidden gems in Plant City, so I entered. I don’t regret the experience.

It was clearly family-owned, and everybody was involved in making sure I felt comfortable. They are a classic cafe bakery, and everything looked and sounded great from the descriptions. I was greeted by who I believe is the owner. He was warm and welcoming and informed me of their menu. The cashier at checkout was a young girl who was patient while I fumbled through what I wanted. I believe the mom suggested the chicken salad and even gave me a sample to try. It was very tasty. I settled on a turkey slider, a small pepperoni pizza, and their popular chicken salad sandwich.

The turkey slider was simple and straightforward. Meat, cheese, and bread. I was honestly under the impression that it was a ground turkey burger slider. This still worked out, as it was a sandwich for my toddler. The only reason I would not purchase it again is because my toddler does not typically go for cold-cut sandwiches. It's a great option for kids and was recommended by the young girl cashier.

The pizza was crisp, fresh, and hot. You can't go wrong with the classic pepperoni. The crust is more like a New York slice, very thin with a crispy bottom. I love the sauce on this pizza. The pepperonis were also salty and greasy in the best way. LOL. I'll order this in the future to share with my toddler.

The star of the show was definitely the chicken salad sandwich. I wish I would have gotten two of them. The chicken salad comes on two mini croissants. It was filling, but not heavy. Light but not full of fluff. The chicken was seasoned well, and I loved the addition of grapes and apples. I know I have to bring my mom back just so we can buy a pint of the chicken salad. It is that good. I see why it's popular. They did have a great range of desserts as well. I all my own Bakery and could tell just from looking that the desserts were well prepared and not try. When I go back for a pint of chicken salad, I'll be sure to grab at least a slice of strawberry cake. It looked delicious.

Overall 5/5 experience. Great food. Superior service. Nice quiet spot to exhale and...

I would never want to put down a small business. However, I do want to share what I feel like was a very strange experience after having high expectations from the amazing reviews. We called in a to go order of 2 pizzas, a waffle and a slice of cake. We were told 20-30 minutes, so we got there 30 minutes later. We were told it would be another five minutes which was no problem. The strangeness began here - the woman who ordered in front of us then went behind the counter and started preparing food. I don’t believe this was the owner or other worker as she needed instruction on how to prepare everything and was not dressed as if she worked there. The girl in the front told me they were out of the chocolate cake I ordered (not an issue) and began ringing up coconut cake instead. I politely declined as I didn’t want that and thought it was odd to assume that would be an automatic substitute. I opted for a dessert waffle instead. We waited another 40 minutes for our food to be ready. Unfortunately, if you get a dessert waffle to go, you get it in a cardboard container that doesn’t close, so the icecream completely melted. Of course you run that risk getting something with ice cream to go but I thought it would have been put in a separate container. Also, I could see the cook in the kitchen was not wearing gloves and reached directly into a bag of lettuce, then a bag of chips, etc. The bbq chicken pizza was good, but the cheese pizza we got was not. It had very little flavor, but somehow left a bad artificial aftertaste. The waffles were fine, probably better when you get them warm.

Overall, they were understaffed and the girl in the front was clearly unhappy about it. This place has a great mission but unfortunately needs some better organization. I’d go back and get a specialty drink but probably wouldn’t...

Visited Sweet Missions' booth at the Strawberry Festival! Absolutely amazing!! Loved their Strawberry Crumble cake & cookies, and the berry chicken salad on a croissant was AMAZING (highlight of the festival for me!) I'm so glad they were part of the event. Strawberries were featured in every dish.

I saw another review on here complaining that their brick&mortar cafe was closed a week ahead of time for festival prep, but that's so silly! OF COURSE they have to prepare ahead of time! They are a small family-owned business, and their booth at the strawberry festival has so many items stocked up that I can imagine it took a ton of work to prepare.

I'm not from the area, but because I found out about this place at the festival, I totally intend to visit Plant City and the cafe :) I want more of that...