Published December 11, 2024
BY LAITH RODRIGUEZ
Widely known by Carmel natives for its cookies and sweet treats located in The Crossroads Carmel, Sweet Reba’s is opening a second location at 268 South Main Street, Salinas, and owner Reba Wilson hopes to officially open by early 2025.
“We are really excited to be there,” says Wilson. “It’s three times the size [of the Carmel location], which makes my heart so very happy. Salinas is great because the kitchen is huge, and there is a whole separate room for dishes.”
The current location of Sweet Reba’s in Carmel is less than 500 square feet, making for a compact yet charming bakery. The “Cake Wars” contestant shares that she hopes to have an open floor plan in the second location.
“It’s not going to be window service like this,” Wilson says. “It’s still grab and go, but it affords a walk-in with a big counter for all our goods to be displayed.”
Sweet Reba’s has a Carmel location and is excited to open their new location in Salinas early next year. (photo by LAITH RODRIGUEZ)
Wilson hopes to upgrade and improve her recipes and baked goods in the business’ new location, specifically in offering more choices on the bakery’s savory menu. This will happen when Wilson begins to add more foods to the menu instead of just having the products as a soup or sandwich of the day.
“We’ll certainly have the same basics–cookies, bars, cake slices, cakes, grab and go cakes, the morning stuff,” Wilson adds. “But then there will be more. We also do breakfast burritos and soup and sandwiches every day, and in Salinas, we plan on offering more of these items all at once.”
Wilson’s inspiration for baking stems from her grandmother, who taught her how to bake and cook foods of excellence in a kitchen from a young age. It has been a journey, which has led her to open not only Sweet Reba’s, but two other entrepreneurial baking avenues. She also participated in Food Network’s competitive baking show “Cake Wars” in 2016.
Starting around 2003, the baker was making dog biscuits under the business name Carmel Critter Cookies. She sold the dog treats at the Monterey Farmers Market. While Wilson no longer operates the pet business, her bakery still offers snacks for dogs.
After her first business, Wilson began selling custom cakes for Sweet Reba’s Custom Cakes, which evolved into her bakery in The Crossroads, less than two miles south of Carmel High School. Sweet Reba’s currently has nine employees, but with a new location, the business owner is hoping that she will be able to hire up to 20 new employees to keep the bakeries running smoothly.
Reba Wilson is hoping to keep the basics and expand her products in her new Salinas location. (courtesy of REBA WILSON)
Wilson maintains that all the recipes the bakery sells are original–when planning a new product, they tend to remix or combine different recipes they take inspiration from. While some never make it to production, a few are successful enough to earn a spot on their display.
“I’ll bake the recipe as it’s written, test it out, and nine times out of ten I tweak it. I add something or change an ingredient,” the baker says. “When you talk about a recipe, you can change one ingredient and it’s a different recipe.”
Wilson is hopeful for the second location, planning to finish up its permitting process in early 2025 and looking forward to sharing her baked goods with more customers.
