Courtesy Our Sons Bakery
From her eastside home, Sabrena “Bre” Suggs churns out batches of dessert popcorn and confections known as Ummmy bars. But her fledgling business, Our Sons Bakery, is about more than satisfying Indianapolis’s sweet tooth. Suggs sees it as a way to make the future brighter for not only her own sons, but Black youth across the city.
Its goals are twofold: provide money for extracurricular activities and tutoring for local kids, and get into IPS classrooms to teach baking and entrepreneurship skills.
Each Ummmy bar—which Suggs describes as somewhere between a cookie and a cake—is named after boys in her family or prominent Black folks like Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Barack Obama. Each son or nephew gets to choose the flavor based on their favorites—the Jordan bar, for instance, is browned butter with triple chocolate chips, and the Xyren bar is fudge mint with Andes-and-Oreo crumble. Of the more than 30 flavors, the best-selling treat is the B-boy bar, a chocolate-and-vanilla swirled delight.
Suggs has watched people close to her fall to incarceration and gun violence. With Our Sons Bakery, which she began in May, she aims to do whatever she can to help others avoid similar fates.
“I’ve been in social services and mental health for a while, and I’ve seen, you know, the ramifications of having the lack of support, lack of protective factors and community, and what can happen. And so it’s super important to me,” she says.
To provide support for Black youth, Our Sons does fundraising bake sales with local organizations and churches. They also sponsor extracurricular activities, trips, and tutoring to help kids who need resources. “Whatever organizations that we come across that have programs or ideas we feel would be beneficial and impactful would be considered for funding,” says Suggs. “We are open to supporting novel ideas.”
The next steps for Our Sons are to find a permanent place to run the bakery and to work with public schools to teach baking and entrepreneurship to at-risk youth.
To taste an Ummmy bar or flavored popcorn for yourself, place orders with Our Sons on Facebook, Instagram, or over the phone at 317-643-1033, and keep up with their pop-up shops, which will be announced through social media.
