Leo & Co. in the Essex Experience will close on November 13 to be replaced by a new Glazed Café operated by Glazed Donuts. The doughnut maker has shared the daytime market and café’s space at 21 Essex Way since August. Glazed co-owner Rachel Lee, 36, said she and her husband, Jordan, hope to launch their new café in early December. During the transition, Lee said, doughnuts will still be available but only by online preorder.
Glazed Café will continue to house the Lees’ doughnut bakery while introducing a café menu of hot breakfast burritos and sandwiches — including a doughnut sandwich — and lunch sandwiches similar to those offered by Leo & Co., Lee said. It will also serve coffee drinks, smoothies, and dirty sodas made with soda, syrups and cream. Staff, including some previously employed by Leo & Co., will keep baking some of that eatery’s popular offerings, such as the vegan blueberry muffin, and chocolate-tahini and brown butter-chocolate chip cookies.
“We fully understand that Leo & Co. has become a third space for the local community and don’t want to change that,” Lee said.
The Lees plan to reduce the size of Leo & Co.’s local food market, add a kids’ play area and introduce “a secret pizza menu” on weekends. They hope to offer same-day online ordering and DoorDash delivery for their doughnuts by early 2027.
Kayla Silver, 33, opened Leo & Co. in June 2024 in the space that Sweet Clover Market had occupied for 17 years. The café is a few doors down in the same building as her first business, Salt & Bubbles Wine Bar and Market, which she launched in 2021.
Silver confirmed that she has also listed Salt & Bubbles for sale and is talking with a few prospective buyers. If she doesn’t sell or find someone to open a new business in the space before the end of the year, she will close the wine shop and bar after a final New Year’s Eve celebration.
Silver said she is very happy that Glazed will keep a café going in the Leo & Co. space, and the decisions to close that business and put her wine shop and bar on the market were tough.
“I took stock of where I’m at in my life, and it’s not that I don’t love what I do,” Silver said, “but I’m also putting in more hours than a mother with an 8-month-old is interested in putting in.”
Silver said she hopes to use her wine industry experience and interest in supporting small winemakers in a different way. “I have some ideas about what comes next,” she said. “Most of it involves working for someone else.”
Monday, November 2: This post has been updated to include the likely final day of service at Salt & Bubbles Wine Bar and Market.
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