Cloudy Donut Co. owner Derrick Faulcon says he never really left Baltimore.
The Westport-grown entrepreneur acquired the vegan bakery in 2019, rebranding it and opening in 2020 with a location on Harford Road and another a year later on South Charles Street. Both spots closed in recent months, leaving Baltimoreans in the lurch as Faulcon’s team established a presence in New York City — a larger market where revenue appeared to boom. Customers thought the popular business abandoned Baltimore, Faulcon said Thursday in a phone call.
Now he’s out to prove them wrong. On Sept. 15, Faulcon and his team will be driving down from New York for a pop-up at their 4311 Harford Road store from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. On Oct. 4, they plan on reopening both Baltimore shops.
“We could have stayed open and served mediocre product and not been present,” Faulcon said of splitting time and resources between the two cities. But instead he doubled down on the larger market, baking about 100 times the number of donuts for his new shops in Nolita and Brooklyn Heights, New York, as he did in Charm City. The business is “revamped,” he said, with more staff, money and experience balancing multiple shops “so that Baltimore can get what New York got.”
Six to eight versions of the vegan pastry are baked each week. The lineup often changes, with flavors ranging from grapefruit mimosa, which has a champagne glaze topped with singed grapefruit, to sexual chocolate, a glazed donut with fudge cake crumbles and a strawberry. On occasion, collaborations on flavors and beverages pop up with other Black and brown entrepreneurs. Hired staff come from a similar background to Faulcon, who was raised in South Baltimore with “few role models” when it came to successful Black business owners, he said.
Faulcon began his journey in the food industry after being released from federal prison in 2012, where he served 11 years. He built a professional network by spearheading a fitness program that allowed him to meet clients leasing commercial spaces around the area. The bakery debuted in 2020 after his successful stint opening the former Towson location of Home Maid, a brunch spot that Faulcon later moved to Key Highway. The local eatery closed alongside Cloudy Donut’s Baltimore locations earlier this year.
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He’s looking to hire and mentor three to four new front-of-house staff in the area “We started our shop to evoke change in the community,” he said, adding that sharing the platform emerging from his donuts’ popularity is an opportunity to uplift other people of color. In an interview last year with The Banner, Faulcon said he aspires to own a home in Georgetown in Washington, D.C., one on the Upper East Side in Manhattan and another in Malibu, California.
“Everything i do is a combination of how I was raised and most importantly where I was raised,” he wrote in an Instagram post announcing the pop-up. “That’s why I am here to finish what i started in the city reopening both of my Baltimore locations and showing the world that even ordinary black men can do extraordinary things. … This final endeavor will show my people you can have it all.”
This article has been updated to reflect that Faulcon's vegan doughnut shop was acquired and rebranded as Cloudy Donut Co.
