Popular Pop-up Bakery Finds Permanent Home on American Tobacco Campus

After a year of pop-ups that saw locals lining up for pillowy morning buns in flavors like pepperoni pizza and pistachio-honey, Lutra Bakery is getting a permanent address.

The popular venture, nomadic to date, will become Lutra Cafe and Bakery with a 2,600-square-foot location at American Tobacco Campus set to open by the end of 2025. The brick-and-mortar will transform Lutra into a seven-days-a-week operation with full breakfast and lunch service alongside its buns, cookies, pretzels, and breads.

“The entire time we’ve been doing pop-ups, we’ve been looking for a location,” says Lutra owner Chris McLaurin, who grew up in Chapel Hill. “When I found out about [the space in] American Tobacco, I was really excited because it’s a place I grew up coming to.”

Lutra’s breakfast menu will include biscuits and gravy, bread pudding, breakfast sandwiches with savory buns sliced and toasted as their foundation, and a “hundred-layer hash brown” made using the French technique pavé. McLaurin says he thinks the hash brown “is going to be something we’ll become known for.”

“You have to slice the potatoes super thin with either a mandolin or a meat slicer, and then you press them together with olive oil between the layers and bake them,” he says. “Once that’s cool, you slice them into rectangular shapes, and then you deep fry them. Since there’s so many layers, all the edges kind of separate and fry up and get crispy, almost like potato chips on the outside while the inside stays really soft.”

The lunch menu will include sandwiches, soups, and salads. 

“We really look to do craveable food: things that, you take that first bite, you close your eyes, and you’re just like, ‘I chose well,’” McLaurin says.

Lutra’s space will feature an open-concept layout with the kitchen visible from the entrance. The dining area will seat about 60 people indoors, with an outdoor patio adding 20 more seats. 

Weekdays will maintain counter service—grab-and-go friendly but with space to linger and work—while weekends will shift to full service with “a fun brunch atmosphere,” McLaurin says.

McLaurin brings more than a decade of kitchen experience to Lutra. He trained at L’Academie de Cuisine before working at the acclaimed D.C. restaurants Komi and Little Serow, and after returning to North Carolina in 2013, he cycled through local favorites—Rose’s, Bar Lusconi, Picnic, and La Place—before landing as chef de cuisine at Ashley Christensen’s Poole’side Pies. When that restaurant closed in late 2023, McLaurin got “the kick in the butt” he needed to start his own venture, he says.

From the establishments where he’s worked, McLaurin learned to balance high-quality food with an accessible vibe. The sweet spot is “when you can marry really good food and professional but casual service,” he says. The name “Lutra,” Latin for otter, reflects the bakery’s playful approach.

Beyond its culinary finesse, Lutra’s rapid success perhaps stems from having a clear niche—buns as the star, inspired by the Pillsbury Orange Rolls that McLaurin ate while watching Saturday morning cartoons as a kid—and from its visibility: near-daily social media posts and collaborations with established businesses that helped build an audience.

In the past year, Lutra has hosted more than 130 pop-ups, including regular appearances at the Cary and North Durham Farmers Markets, weekly “Sunday Bunday” events at Queeny’s, and collaborations with local businesses like Alley Twenty Six, Part and Parcel, Saltbox Seafood Joint, and Ideal’s.

McLaurin plans to continue Lutra’s pop-up schedule until the brick-and-mortar opens, with a new Saturday-Sunday lineup to be announced soon. The bakery will also continue its wholesale relationships with The Durham Hotel, Everlou, and other local coffee shops after establishing its permanent location.

Reach Staff Writer Lena Geller at [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].