Why it belongs in ORBIS
Started in 1947 by Ralph Hinson in North Little Rock, this bakery has run around the clock from Little Rock's historic Cohn Building since Joe Fox reopened it there in 1993. Overnight bakers keep the cases full of scratch-baked donuts, cakes and tiramisu for the morning rush.
Ralph Hinson started this bakery in 1947 in the Rose City section of North Little Rock, moving it to a storefront near 14th and Main Streets in Little Rock in 1952. His head cake decorator, Agnes Bargiel, bought the business from him in the late 1970s and ran it until she sold it to Joe Fox in 1983.
Fox relocated the bakery again after renovating the vacant, historic Cohn Building at 12th and Main, reopening there in 1993 — the location it still occupies today. The kitchen inside now runs continuously, seven days a week, to keep pace with demand for fresh product each morning.
That round-the-clock schedule produces the donuts, cakes and tiramisu the bakery is known for downtown, made from scratch overnight so cases are full when the doors open. The Cohn Building itself predates the bakery inside it, giving Community Bakery a home with its own local history layered onto the business's — a corner storefront that has sat at 12th and Main since the 1993 renovation, in continuous overnight production ever since.