Photos by:
Kelsie Posey
Staff Photographer
Story by:
Amina Ramsey
Senior Reporter
A black-owned bakery featuring vegan and gluten-free desserts has several communities in southeast Georgia is search of the highly-rated treats.
4and20 Bakers is the brainchild of Chad Montgomery. Montgomery was born and raised in upstate New York in a family of seven with three sisters and three brothers.
Montgomery was nine-years-old when he realized his passion for baking.
It was Easter, and Montgomery had made a huge, lifelike cake shaped and decorated as an Easter Bunny. The frosted rabbit had eyes, a nose and black licorice whiskers.
“I was enamored over the decorations,” Montgomery said. “It was like a new discovery as a child. It turned me into one of those kids who was obsessed in the kitchen.”
While Montgomery’s childhood friends were making hot pockets and pop tarts, he was busy in the kitchen crafting decadent calamari and restaurant-style taco salad.
Homemade fare lined the counters of his house parties. If you stopped by Montgomery’s house, you knew you weren’t going to leave hungry.
Montgomery’s nickname from friends and family is ‘Grandma Chad’ because he loves cooking and feeding people. He loves to see people happy, and happy people tend to congregate around food and give off amazing energy and happiness, Montgomery said.
Montgomery credits his love and creativity for cooking to his humble beginnings.
Resourcefulness was key in his household.
“If you weren’t creative, you were in trouble,” Montgomery said. “Chicken dinner today was chicken salad tomorrow and chicken soup the day after that.”
But his esteemed bakery did not come early in life. Montgomery wore many professional hats before diving back into his lifelong passion of baking.
Upon graduating high school, Montgomery enlisted in the Marines. He chose that route simply because he “wanted to blow shit up.”
During his time in the Marines, he became stationed in southern California. There, Montgomery worked two part-time jobs. One was in a retail store and the other was a bodyguard in the city of the stars; Hollywood, Calif. He landed a gig working security for Michael Jackson’s tour.
After ten years, he received the G.I. Bill through the Marines and decided to go back to school. He attended Morrisville State University and received a degree in Animal Science.
While Montgomery was working several jobs , his former boss saw him and offered him a job based on his non-stop work ethic. He then became a mortgage broker in Southern California for J.F. Mortgage Company.
Later, he worked as a Surveillance DJ for an event planning company. During his time there, he DJ’d over 500 weddings and events. Montgomery said he can do everything at a wedding except officiate it at this point.
It doesn’t stop there. Montgomery was also a professional fisherman sponsored by companies such as Eckerdz Sporting Goods and Sheman Fishing Rods, founder of a Boot Camp for At-Risk youth, and a Contractor for the Department of Defense for the Marines.
During his time as a Contractor for the Department of Defense, Montgomery would personally called the families of those who were actively deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan to see if they needed anything… anything under the sun. If they did, his job was to provide it to them at all costs.
Suddenly, he and his entire department were laid off from the military with a one week’s notice.
With and urgent need and desire to work, he began to ask friends and family if they needed any catering services. Montgomery soon caught the eye of a restaurant that catered to the likes of Gladys Knight, Juanita Bass, Frankie Valli, and Aaron Tippin.
While employed at the restaurant, he moved up to Pastry Chef. Soon after receiving this position, 4&20 Bakers came to life.
Many people have questioned where the name 4&20 Bakers came from. It was a business tactic, Montgomery said.
“I wanted to reach as many demographics as I could, and I did it with the name,” Montgomery said.
The 4&20 namesake was born from two concepts. The first one is traditionally likened with smoking marijuana. April 20, also referred to as 4/20, is the unofficial holiday for marijuana smokers and the likes of Bob Marley. Typically, people experience major cravings after smoking, known as “the munchies.”
However, 4&20 also comes from a verse in the nursery rhyme, “Sixpence.” Montgomery sung the song as a child.
“The verse goes, ‘Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye, four and twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie,’” Montgomery said.
With the genius marketing strategy of targeting smokers with the munchies and children with a lingering sweet tooth, he finalized the name: 4&20 Bakers.
The bakery hosts a wide variety of cakes, cupcakes, pies, and house-made lemonades.
The menu has numerous regular treats, but highlights vegan and gluten-free desserts. In the near future, Montgomery plans to add items that are both gluten free and vegan recipes to the menu.
The bakery’s best seller is currently the lemon-blueberry cupcake. It is filled with a lemon curd and made with Georgia blueberries. A vegan treat at the bakery has captured the heart of Montgomery’s kitchen assistant, Katie Cook. Cook loves the vegan chocolate chip cookie dough cupcake, topped with a vegan chocolate chip cookie.
Cook enjoys working at 4&20 Bakers; a huge part of which she attributes to having Montgomery as a boss.
“He is a wonderful boss,” Cook said. “He likes to listen to everyone’s ideas to see if someone’s idea is better. He’s supportive, you can tell that he really cares.”
Cook said that the patrons of the bakery are some of the friendliest and sweetest customers she has ever interacted with.
Trish Evans and her daughter, Ana Grace Evans, are long-time, loyal customers of 4&20 Bakers. That is largely due to their selection of treats that suit Ana Grace’s diet.
Ana Grace has a pre-existing auto-immune disease that is currently being studied at the National Institute of Health near Washington, D.C. Her auto-immune disease requires her to have the utmost caution with what she ingests. Due to her dietary restriction, she can rarely eat out at restaurants. 4&20 Bakers is one of the only places where that isn’t an issue.
4&20 Bakers is the only place that Ana Grace can go get store-bought cupcakes and they don’t taste like cardboard, Trish said.
Chad’s menu makes sure that children like Ana Grace are able to indulge in treats just like everyone else. Trish Evans is thankful for Montgomery’s items on the menu.
“Let me brag on Chad for a little bit,” Trish Evans said. “He is a stellar young man. He is kind and understanding. If he can feed my daughter, he can feed anybody.”
Trish Evans’ enthusiasm for 4&20 Bakers is shared by her daughter, Ana Grace.
“A lot of times when I go out to eat with my friends, I just sit there and can’t eat anything with them,” Ana Grace said.
Montgomery makes sure that all the produce used in his desserts are locally harvested. His peaches are fresh from Ogeechee Peaches, his strawberries are picked at Jacobs Produce, and his muscadines for his muscadine lemonade come from his own neighbor’s backyard in Screven, Georgia.
Montgomery supports local farmers and he even has a farm of his own. His farm, Farm Island, in Screven, Ga grows pesticide-free produce. Montgomery doesn’t want to eat food grown with pesticides and he feels the best way to ensure that is by growing it himself.
He will soon open a greenhouse on Farm Island used for growing exotic fruits including pineapple, passionfruit, dragon fruit, avocados, zaczuma.
The greenhouse will also grow microgreens for the salads that will premiere at his very own restaurant. Montgomery will open Sixpence Restaurant in Sylvania, Georgia. Patrons can expect to be served fresh salads, baked ziti, lasagna, and desserts including crème brûlée and tiramisu.
The new restaurant will house a brick oven for BBQ pulled pork pizza, beer, wine, and his famous strawberry, peach, and muscadine lemonades.
The heat doesn’t stop at Six Pence. In April, Montgomery will be premiering his newly renovated food concession trailer. The trailer houses an oven in the back for making wood-fired pizzas to serve to hungry customers in search of something savory. The truck will add coffee to its menu, in addition to the desserts and lemonades.
If you can’t make it to Sylvania, Montgomery will have 4&20 Bakers treats and foods at his food concession trailer every Thursday at Georgia Southern University’s Campus Farmers’ Market. The Campus Farmer’s Market is open to students, faculty, staff, and locals for everyone to enjoy weekly.
4&20 Bakers currently serves the Statesboro, Savannah, and Augusta area. However, thanks to their new mobile app, they are able to serve you anywhere. Montgomery will be catering a wedding in New Orleans in May.
Also, 4&20 Bakers will hopefully be working with Flag Creek Boy Scouts Camp at their newly built facility located in Sylvania, Georgia to host events and cater for the Boy Scout troops.
If Montgomery’s past is any indication of his future, 4&20 Bakers is the sweet beginning to countless future ventures.
