Located in a modest store in the East Village in New York City, the Mary Irish soda bread store is mixed with the other red brick businesses in the block. But one thing distinguishes it: customers align routinely, sometimes for hours, to put their hands in their freshly baked products before they run out.
The store menu is simple, with breads and buns of Irish soda bread served with salty butter and fresh raspberry jam. The recipes, transmitted through generations of Mary O’Halloran’s family, are at the center of their operations. But the secret of its success is precision. Solo O’Halloran manages the dough, a non -negotiable standard that insists maintains the quality of its baked products.
“I have had people and say: ‘Why don’t you have someone to come and help you?’ It won’t work, “he said.
O’Halloran said that the demand for their soda bread buns increases every March for St. Patrick’s Day, but its trip to success has not been easy. Five years ago, O’Halloran faced the closure of its East Village pub due to the financial tension of the Covid-19 pandemic. Her husband, a length who worked in Alaska, could not return home due to travel restrictions, letting her manage the business alone.
It was her faithful pub customers who encouraged her to start selling her buns, a gift they had come to love. What began as a small -scale company soon caught the attention of Brandon Stanton, the creator of the viral account of the social networks of New York “with more than 12 million followers.
After interviewing O’Halloran, Stanton offered to help run his voices on his buns. Rescuing at the beginning, O’Halloran finally agreed, which led to an increase in sales.
“So I wrote a story about this, and we ended that night selling buns of one million dollars,” Stanton told NBC News. “It is one of the best stories in the world.”
The overwhelming response converted the small baking operation of O’Halloran into a community effort. Regular customers and neighbors present packaging orders, printing labels and decoration boxes with handwritten notes and custom drawings of one of their daughters. Despite the increase in demand, O’Halloran remained committed to quality, handling each batting batch.
“Maria is where she is because that bun knows so well,” Stanton said. “She would have arrived there without me.”
He took more than a year to fulfill the accumulation of orders, but the hard work was worth it. The income not only saved his pub, but allowed him to open the Irish soda bread store of Mary or in November 2024. Customers around the world go to their store to try the viral buns and meet the woman behind the sweets.
“I live in Los Angeles, but they told me, you know, the next time you are in the city, there is a place we have to go, and it is the best bun you have had. It’s the best soda bread, ”said David Murphy.
For O’Halloran, hard work has been worth it.
“I love it, so it’s easy,” he said. “Of course I am tired, but I love what I get with people. Then it is easy. “
Maddie McDonagh contributed.
