As Masters Week returned to its normal scope after two years of limiting COVID restrictions, new businesses are engaging the influx of one of Augusta’s busiest times of year for the first time.
“I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off,” said chef Arielle Page, started her online-order gourmet bakery, Arie’s Confectioneries, in August 2020. “This is actually my first year being in Augusta during Masters; this was like the first year where everything’s kind of like ramping back up and gearing back up. And this is the first year my business is being involved in something like this.”
Page said the weekend before the tournament saw her highest sales at the Augusta Market, with her specialty cakes selling out before the market was supposed to close.
Just as the pandemic led to decreased business in some areas, it was either the impetus for, or set the stage for, new enterprises to pop up, particularly in food and beverage.
Lauren Ervin, a former real estate agent and art teacher at the now-closed studio Van Gogh and Vino, started a custom cookie bakery, Frosted Cutter, while she was pregnant with twins, also during the height of the COVID pandemic in 2020. The cottage kitchen bakery takes orders from online, but once a quarter, Ervin says, she opens a “Cookie Pop-Up” at her home in Evans, in which customers can buy up the homemade treats in person.
The latest Cookie Pop-Up was Sunday, falling on the end of the Augusta National tournament.
“I’ve had more online orders,” said Ervin about how the week affected Frosted Cutter. The Pop-Up wasn’t a bust by any means, but there weren’t too many regulars coming to try her latest “do it yourself” designer cookies. “All of my neighbors are out of town this week.”
Sometimes the ripple effect of the Garden City’s golf week means business as usual. That was the case for heavy-metal-themed sandwich and salad shop Mosh Pit Eats, which opened its doors at its Martinez location in November 2021.
“We’re doing normal numbers,” said owner Jason Parrish. “We do a lot of offices, working clientele, and a lot of their businesses are down this week or if they’re out of town.”
Parrish notes that while people have been coming in for sandwiches, because so many of their clients have left for the week, catering requests have been “non-existent.”
Arie’s Confectioneries also offers catering services, and Page says she did see an increase in business alongside the boom during the Augusta Market, with plenty of out-of-towners asking for Georgia-inspired desserts, like the peach cheesecake. She also set up at the Mayor’s Masters Reception at the Augusta Commons on April 4.
“That was our first time doing something like that,” said Page. “The crowd actually was not as big as we thought it would be on that day, but we still ended up meeting a lot of good people.”
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering education in Columbia County and business-related topics for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
