At 8:45 a.m. on July 18, Olmos Park Mayor Erin Harrison cut a ribbon outside a bakery that had not existed twelve months earlier. Behind her, a line had already formed on McCullough Avenue for the first fifty guests, who would each walk away with a free cinnamon roll. By nine, Dough Baby was officially open, and its owner, a longtime San Antonio pastry chef named Nancy Fitch, was doing what she has apparently always done at these openings: working the front counter herself, greeting people by name.
What makes this worth a second look isn't the ribbon or the cinnamon roll giveaway. It's the decision underneath it. Fitch had spent two years selling out her tent at the Pearl Farmers Market inside one of the most trafficked, most photographed commercial districts in the city. When it came time to open her first permanent storefront, the place with the built-in foot traffic, the tourists, the Saturday crowds, she didn't stay. She picked Olmos Park instead. A few months later, a different Pearl-area business made a strikingly similar call, for different reasons, at a different scale. Read together, they say something about this small city that neither story says on its own.
From Pearl Market to Olmos Park
The pop-up version of Dough Baby sold out within an hour of its first market appearance. That kept happening, weekend after weekend, for two years. When Fitch finally leased a commercial kitchen and started scouting for a permanent home, the obvious move for a Pearl-proven concept would have been a Pearl-adjacent address. Instead, the bakery landed at 4219 McCullough Avenue in Olmos Park, open Wednesday through Monday and closed only on Tuesdays, selling eleven kolache varieties that range from a straightforward sausage and cheese to an Italian muffuletta built on ham, salami, prosciutto and olive salad.
Fitch's résumé reads like a tour of San Antonio's serious kitchens. She's a past president of Les Dames d'Escoffier, the international society for women in food and hospitality, and she's worked at Biga on the Banks and Rosario's before running the Peach Cafe in Boerne for fifteen years. Before Dough Baby existed as a business, Fitch spent eight years managing the Pearl Farmers Market itself, which means she understood exactly what that address was worth before she chose to walk away from it for her own shop.
Fitch has said the shift happened organically. "Many of our market customers have found their way to the store in Olmos Park," she told a reporter after opening. It's a modest way to describe what actually happened: a base of customers who already had Pearl access chose to follow her to a smaller, quieter street instead of expecting her to stay where they were.
The Little Finch Opens Bigger Boutique
The second bet landed a few blocks away and moves at a slower pace. The Tiny Finch, a Pearl boutique known for its European sensibility, curated home goods and apothecary shelf, is opening a second San Antonio location at 201 E. Olmos Drive. Owner Karen Lee Zachry is targeting an October debut, though she's been candid that the date could still shift.
What separates this from a simple expansion is the arithmetic. The new Olmos Park space is twice the size of the original Pearl shop Zachry bought from founder Courtney Beauchamp back in 2023. Roughly three quarters of the merchandise will carry over, keeping what Zachry calls the store's European boutique feel, but the added square footage is deliberate. It buys room for a backroom shoe selection, larger mirrors for sizing up cocktail dresses, and an expanded edit that a cramped Pearl footprint never had space for.
Zachry isn't hiding her excitement about the timing. "We're just so thrilled about the opportunity," she said of the move. That's a retailer choosing to bet her biggest physical expansion, the one investment that actually requires more square footage than she already had, on Olmos Park rather than on a bigger stage inside the Pearl or along a proven retail strip like Broadway.
The Corridor on McCullogh
Neither business arrived to an empty street. McCullough Avenue already had a working food and retail base before Dough Baby's ribbon cutting, which is part of why the timing reads as confidence rather than experimentation. A short list of what was already there:
- Full Belly Cafe + Bar, serving brunch and lunch from 4212 McCullough Avenue, Monday through Saturday from 8 a.m. and Sundays from 8 a.m. as well
- Pesto Ristorante, an established dinner room at 5221 McCullough Avenue open Tuesday through Sunday
- Olmos Pluma, a farm-to-cup coffee shop at 5223 McCullough Avenue built around beans grown on a fourth-generation family farm in Oaxaca, open daily from early morning through mid-afternoon
- The Olmos Park Village Center at McCullough and Vassar Lane, home to Hunt Gallery, an Edward Jones office, a Subway and other small tenants that have anchored that corner for years
None of that reads like a district in decline waiting for rescue. It reads like a corridor with a working dinner scene and an established daytime coffee habit that two outside operators looked at and decided still had room for exactly what they were selling: a full-service bakery counter and a larger-format boutique.
Two Different Spots in the Community
Here's the part that doesn't show up in either business's own announcement. Fitch's decision and Zachry's decision represent two different kinds of confidence, and they landed on the same eight or so blocks in the same year almost by coincidence.
Fitch made a first-time bet. She had no existing footprint to protect and no sunk cost tied to Olmos Park specifically. She could have opened literally anywhere in San Antonio and chose this address anyway, with nothing to fall back on if it didn't work.
Zachry made a scale-up bet. She already had a proven, profitable Pearl location generating real numbers. Doubling her square footage in Olmos Park wasn't a hedge against failure elsewhere. It was a decision that this particular small city could support more retail than her existing footprint allowed, in a format twice the size of what already worked.
One operator bet everything on Olmos Park from zero. The other bet incremental growth on Olmos Park after already succeeding somewhere else. Both bets point at the same eight blocks. That's the detail worth sitting with. The city's own business directory still classifies Olmos Park as a small town, listing its population at roughly 2,409 residents, smaller than plenty of single subdivisions elsewhere in San Antonio. Two operators with real Pearl-district credibility looked at that number and didn't treat it as a limitation.
What a Saturday in the Neighborhood Looks Like Now
For residents, the practical shift is smaller than the business story but easier to feel. A morning that used to require a drive to the Pearl for a proper kolache now starts on McCullough Avenue instead, with Olmos Basin Park a short distance away and open daily from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. for anyone stretching the outing into a walk. Once October arrives and The Tiny Finch opens its doors, the same short stretch adds a browsing stop that didn't exist here before at that scale.
None of this changes what Olmos Park has always been. It changes what a resident can do without leaving it.
If you want more of these updates as they happen, or you're simply curious what else is landing on McCullough Avenue this year, reach out to Paulette Jemal directly. She keeps a closer eye on this corridor than most, and she's always happy to talk through what's new in the neighborhood, no agenda attached.
