Room to Grow

The cinnamon-roll-shaped hole in Wilmington’s collective stomach will be full once again this Saturday, Feb. 7, when The Jelly Cabinet reopens after more than a month of renovations.

Phillip Jones III quickly made moves to open the Fourth Street bakery in the summer of 2023 after his sister saw a listing for the building (which was previously a bakery) on Facebook Marketplace.

“I always wanted to start my own business, but this was not planned and literally happened in seven days,” Jones said.

The space is just over 700 square feet, and pre-renovation, Jones’s workspace was 10 by 15 feet. He had one workbench, one oven and one freezer.

“Everything that I serve I make. I don’t buy jam from anywhere, I don’t buy frosting,” he said. “Everything is made 100% from scratch, and so this whole time I’ve been doing that in that small space. It’s been good, but I can’t do it anymore! I’m making space for myself before I go insane.”

Jones got the name for The Jelly Cabinet from his days growing up baking with his grandmother and going back and forth to grab ingredients for her from her own jelly cabinet. In high school, Jones took culinary arts classes and started working at a restaurant before heading to culinary school at Cape Fear Community College (CFCC).

“When I started culinary school, I had already been baking for so long that I wasn’t completely lost, but I needed to get etched into shape,” he said.

Jones is now a full-time instructor teaching baking and pastry arts at CFCC, in addition to running the bakery on weekends.

“Doing both has definitely been a juggling act, which is why I haven’t had the time to really make it my own,” he said. “That’s why I wanted to do the renovation — now it’s gonna be me in full.”

In addition to updated counters, touches of copper and an overall brighter atmosphere, Jones’s workspace will be bigger when the bakery reopens. The new space will have three workstations, three benches and a refrigerator where he can keep ingredients.

“I was having to shop twice a week before because the refrigerator was so small I couldn’t buy a bunch of butter or eggs at once because there was nowhere to put it,” he said. Now, he’ll be able to have one refrigerator full of ingredients and a refrigerated case for ready-to-eat items for customers.

As for menu items, loyal customers of The Jelly Cabinet can expect to find the staple items they know and love, including an even wider array of rotating specials.

“The specials are a fun thing to do because I can explore seasonal flavors,” Jones said. “That’s my favorite thing ever; I’ll go to the grocery store and see an ingredient and I’m like, ‘I could do so many things with this.’ So, with the new menu, I want to offer the same things but offer more specials because I’ll have more space to bring in fresh ingredients.”

As a child of the South, though, Jones has one ingredient staple that isn’t going anywhere.

“I love cornmeal and try to incorporate it into a lot of what I bake,” he said. “The texture, the flavor … it’s just so unique, and I never saw it at other bakeries growing up, just at home. I put it in the cinnamon rolls, muffins, even the pie crust has cornmeal in it.”

While The Jelly Cabinet has been hugely successful in its current location, Jones doesn’t foresee a future expansion into multiple sites, saying “that’s not what food is to me.” He prefers to be able to focus on the craft of creating his menu items from scratch and is thrilled to soon be able to do so in a roomier environment.

“The way it was set up before wasn’t terrible, but it just wasn’t me and there wasn’t enough space,” he said. “I had to roll with what I had at that moment, but now I’m going to be doing twirls back there.”

Visit The Jelly Cabinet Saturdays and Sundays at 1011 N. Fourth St.