To make an open house feel extra homey, real estate agents sometimes bake batches of cookies. If I were them, I’d switch to buns.
I’m not suggesting they sully a viewing-ready kitchen by mixing, kneading and rolling. With frozen packs of the original brioche sticky buns (“the O.G.s”) from Haymaker Bun, all they need to do is preheat the oven to 350 degrees, cut open a vacuum-sealed plastic cover and throw in a tray of four rolls.
The buns’ buttery, cinnamon-brown sugar aroma fills the air while they bake for 12 to 15 minutes, wafting out with extra oomph when the oven door is opened. Flip the tray onto a pretty plate and voilà — buns! The pillowy, sticky swirls make me appreciate my own house even when my toddler has turned the couch into a trash truck.
The frozen buns are a little lighter than a traditional frosted cinnamon roll and every bit as sweet as a bun fresh from the case at Haymaker’s cafés in Middlebury and Burlington. Most importantly, they require zero planning ahead beyond remembering to buy a box at the grocery store.
Haymaker has been selling packages of the O.G.s ($12.50 average) since January 2023, the same month its original location on Middlebury’s Bakery Lane was named a James Beard Awards semifinalist for Outstanding Bakery. Both there and in Burlington, the cafés sell fresh buns in rotating flavors, sandwiches, salads, and other items for breakfast and lunch.
“It was a COVID project,” chef-owner Caroline Corrente said of the ready-to-heat product line. For now, the cinnamon-swirled O.G. is her business’ only wholesale offering. But the frozen format “gives us a lot of room to play around” with different flavors and box sizes, Corrente said.
The Haymaker team makes 150,000 buns per year, counting both fresh and frozen. When the biz expanded from Middlebury to a second location in Burlington in 2024, Corrente moved the frozen bun production to the open-kitchen bakery on Pine Street.
The process is similar to baking Haymaker’s fresh buns, Corrente said, though staff does it all in one day rather than proofing the dough overnight. The frozen buns are also a slightly different shape: Instead of being round coils, they have square edges to fit the tray they’re baked in. After baking, trays are vacuum sealed, boxed and stored in chest freezers.
Haymaker’s buns fill the market gap between crack-open tubes of cinnamon rolls and $100 unbaked rolls ordered through Goldbelly, a nationwide delivery platform. Corrente hasn’t taken on investment to scale the biz, but she said frozen bun sales have grown organically from their start at the Middlebury Natural Foods Co-op to distribution around Vermont as well as nearby New Hampshire and New York through East Arlington’s Wilcox’s Premium Ice Cream.
Now, they’re available in 40 stores, and Craftsbury’s Myers Produce distributes them in the Bay State, Connecticut, Rhode Island and more widely in New York from its Massachusetts warehouse.
“I’m going to be laughing one day when I think about all of my employees sealing these little boxes — the same way I laugh about making buns out of my house, where I could only fit 24 in my oven at a time,” Corrente said.
Things have certainly changed since Corrente started Haymaker in her home kitchen in 2017. She hinted at the possibility of opening more brick-and-mortar cafés in Vermont and said she hopes to have frozen buns in 75 to 100 stores by the end of 2026.
Buying a box at the Middlebury co-op or City Market has become part of my grocery routine, with a spot reserved for Haymaker’s frozen buns in my otherwise unorganized chest freezer. I’ve served them at toddler birthday parties, at last-minute holiday brunch gatherings and on a random Tuesday morning, thankful each time that they only take 12 minutes to bake.
“Small Pleasures” is an occasional column that features delicious and distinctive Vermont-made snacks or drinks that pack a punch. Send us your favorite little bites or sips with big payoff at food@sevendaysvt.com.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Sweet Convenience | Haymaker Bun’s frozen four-packs are a quick morning treat”
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