Sarah O’Brien, Owner of Little Tart Bakeshop and Big Softie. Photo by Heather Troutman.Since moving to Atlanta in 2010 to launch a bakery, Little Tart owner Sarah O’Brien, 40, has been on a mission: to create a successful business, provide sustainable careers for her employees and give back to the community.
From Little Tart’s start selling pastries at a local farmers market, O’Brien has seen slow and steady growth over the years. She opened a brick-and-mortar location in Grant Park on Memorial Drive in 2011, and today there’s three locations as well as Big Softie, a soft-serve ice cream shop in Summerhill.
“I think growing in that way has been really healthy for us, and it’s given me time to get better because I certainly did not know what I was doing!” she laughs.
O’Brien, who learned to bake from her grandmother, says the entrepreneurial spirit comes from her father, who has had his own business for 50 years. In starting her own business, she says, “I wanted to create a place to work in which I would want to work.”
That includes ensuring sustainable careers for her 60 employees by offering a living wage, health benefits, set schedules and paid time off, which is required. And after hearing about a potential virus in January of 2020, she added one more benefit: sick leave.
“I wanted to encourage them not to come in if they were sick,” she says. Throughout the shutdown O’Brien continued paying for health insurance, and to ensure those benefits, she added a 4% fee to each check last July. “It’s something I have to make sure we have and protect.”
One of the most important aspects of running a successful business for O’Brien? Putting money back into the community.
“There’s nothing that feels better to me than giving money away,” she says. “If we can make more money, then there’s more money to give to the community by way of our farmers – to our artisans who are making our honey and cheese, to our employees – and donations to the community.”
From the beginning, O’Brien has given back – from donations of gift cards to schools to donating pastries to fundraisers including Love is Love and No Kid Hungry. As the business has grown, those efforts have become more focused. She and her team organize an annual Cookie Grab to raise funds for Planned Parenthood, and she is a co-founder of Southern Restaurants for Racial Justice, which was started in 2020 to provide grants to Black-owned restaurants. Getting money into the hands of people who need it quickly “was one of the most impactful things we could do,” she says.
That’s also one reason O’Brien admires the Giving Kitchen. “They are helping to set the standard for the restaurant industry to be sustainable,” she says. As a longtime supporter, O’Brien says, “I have such an admiration for them and what they do. It’s really helpful to have them as a resource, and they’re incredible at getting money to people who need it quickly. I’m here to help them whenever I can.”
