Tucker is undoubtedly one of the fastest-rising business destinations in the Metro Atlanta area. Each month, the Business Boom will seek to show different examples of how Tucker’s business scene is flourishing. This month's column is written by our Business Outreach Coordinator, Angela Brooks.
Black or African American History Month (Feb. 1-March 1) each year honors the contributions and sacrifices of African Americans who have helped shape this nation.
Davies Donkor, owner of La Baguette Bakery, is one of those African Americans who can actually trace his ancestry directly to Ghana in west Africa.
His family immigrated to the United States when he was two-years old, but he confesses that he didn’t return to his homeland until 43 years later. “For all those years, I bought into the stereotype of Africa as an impoverished country with little to offer me.” But to his surprise he fell in love with its beauty and its flourishing economy. “Now, I go back there as often as I can,” says Donkor. “I have so much respect for the creativity and ingenuity exhibited by Ghanaian people. They don’t have the technologies that we have here, but they have become masters at doing more with less.”
Like millions of other immigrants from around the globe that come to America, his father brought the family here to create a path to a better life, a path of education which ultimately led to entrepreneurship.
Donkor’s journey to proprietor of a wholesale bakery began by happenstance with his mother’s purchase of a restaurant in Buckhead and neither of them having experience running an eatery. Over the 12 years since then, the business has grown to service most of the Atlanta area in volume baking for restaurants, hotels, schools, and other commercial enterprises.
“An opportunity presented itself, and my mom unexpectedly bought a restaurant in Buckhead,” he says.” After ultimately transitioning to the bakery, he moved operations to the Fulton Industrial area. So, what brought him to Tucker? One of the key selling points that bring many businesses here; location, location, location.
“I had outgrown the space in Fulton industrial and was looking for a larger industrial space, and I wanted to be in close proximity to the city [of Atlanta].” Having grown up in Decatur, he knew that the Mountain Industrial area was one of the first places to look. “I wanted to stay close near 285 where I have easy access to get in the city to deliver my products fresh.”
His product line consists of a variety of breads, buns, rolls from his signature creation: panoo (pronounced PAH-noo) a Ghanian-inspired sweet bread. “My recipe comes from things that I knew of growing up; flavors that my mother would use at home that just resonated with me. Then took that to create the panoo,” he explained. “Since I was already making bread, I just encompassed that in a product that was a simple hot dog bun when I started out, but from that I realized that I could open that same product to all facets of the American meal, whether it be for dinner, lunch, breakfast; it doesn't matter,” he added.
He is grateful for all of those ancestors who made sacrifices that have enabled him to get where he is today. And although appreciative of the month-long observance, “I do think that our lives and our contributions to American history are much broader than 28 days.”
He says his current business objective is to “really create a lane for panoo. This particular product is the next new wave of how I would like to leave my mark on this world.”
La Baguette Bakery is located at 1810 Auger Drive in Tucker and can be found on the web at PanooBread.com.
