Coffee & Treats in Wake Forest

Goodberry's is a locally owned-and-operated creamery that's been serving up frozen custard made from all-natural ingredients such as milk, cream, and honey to North Carolina residents for more than 20 years. Recoiling from Faustian deals with depraved chemical preservatives and artificial stabilizers, Goodberry's chooses to whip up new batches of its frozen custard hourly to ensure maximum flavor and freshness. Flavors are limited to three: vanilla made with real Madagascar beans, rich dark chocolate, and a rotating flavor of the day. Custard connoisseurs looking to bring some personality to their pudding cups can try a famous Goodberry's Carolina concrete ($4.49 for a regular), a custom treat made by mixing your selected flavor with any combination of mix-ins, served upside down as a testament to its titular thickness and factual hold over taste buds, unlike the mix-your-own treats full of G.I. Joe toys offered by actual concrete manufacturers.

Made fresh daily, Daylight Donuts bakes and shakes a bevy of baked goodies to satisfy hungry stomachs and coat throats with a spread of liquid energizers. Sate dough desires with a delicious assortment of bountiful sweets, including the light-textured, made-from-scratch donuts ($0.89+), taste-bud-tantalizing cupcakes ($2.50), or tongue-smothering cakes ($30+).

In life, there are people who follow the rules, and then there are those who decide to blaze their own path. Tyler Adkins, owner and baker-in-chief at Cups Cookies, is one of the latter, having quit his career in law to pursue something more fulfilling: baking. But he knew he didn’t want to offer humdrum cookies you could get anywhere. Instead, he broke away from the traditional flat-cookie shape and molded his dough into cupcake pans, creating a new line of hybrid treats with delicious fillings.

Not only does Adkins do the baking, he can often be found delivering cookies to happy customers around New York City. Each dozen contains six flavors, ensuring sweet teeth are satisfied enough to take an early retirement.

In the 1950s, Judy Lasater began baking cakes and other sweets according to the elder founder's recipes created over 100 years ago. Three decades later, Lasater partnered with her own daughter, Beth Pendergrass, to open Edible Art Bakery. Though another 30 years have passed since the bakery’s opening, not much has changed. They still adhere to the age-old Southern tradition of scratch baking, which eschews frozen layers and mixes in favor of natural and easily pronounceable ingredients.

The team of bakers and artists that now stands behind the store’s counters upholds the family’s legacy with traditional cakes and cupcakes in flavors such as southern lemon ice box and chocolate truffle. Swirls of buttercream or fondant icing adorn each creation, which the artists can embellish with themed designs to celebrate graduations and children's birthday parties or welcome a new gallon of milk into the home.

Spearheaded by a local couple, Big City Bagels & Cafe surges with the scents of New York–style water bagels and homemade sandwiches. Vegetable, scallion, strawberry, and cinnamon raisin walnut cream cheeses swathe freshly baked bagels, as classic philly cheesesteaks sport thinly sliced rib eye and Cheese Whiz layered into italian hoagie rolls. In the dining room, customers roost upon tabletops surrounded by sunny yellow walls and artwork representations of major cities. The eatery's catering services are also available to furnish meetings, parties, and lengthy PTA canoe trips with trays of sandwich fixings, breakfast morels, and desserts.

From behind a frozen granite slab, the staff of Cold Stone Creamery uses twin spatulas to blend custom servings of ice cream and creative mix-ins to fit customers’ exact specifications. Founded by Donald and Susan Sutherland in 1988, Cold Stone began under the hot Arizona sun, eventually spreading its frosty fingers to encompass more than 1,400 locations worldwide. Despite the size of the company, each location’s staff keeps up the handcrafted quality, making ice cream onsite every day and using those signature spatulas to create delicious pointillist art against the freezer wall.