KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — What if we told you you could eat a cupcake or a brownie or even some fried chicken that was free from gluten, dairy, soy, tree nuts and peanuts?
Would you believe us?
That's the reality at Free Reign Bakery's newest location in Bearden. It's a big 8 allergen-free bakery and restaurant working to make sure everyone can enjoy delicious food.
Sarah Blackburn is the owner of Free Reign.
She grew up with food allergies, and started experimenting in her kitchen a few years ago, with the goal of creating yummy food that wouldn't upset her stomach.
Blackburn started selling her baked goods in 2018, renting commercial kitchen space to bake them.
Fast forward to 2019, when Free Reign Bakery opened a Powell storefront that they quickly started outgrow.
"We have a lot of loyal customers and a lot of people who come in who honestly travel quite a ways to come and visit us," Blackburn said in an interview in 2020.
Blackburn knew she needed to expand, and now owns three stores.
"I'm crazy. Every day I'm trying to figure out how all of this happened," she said.
Free Reign Bakery is in Powell, they serve a smaller menu inside Health Factory off Alcoa Highway, and are now serving a full menu of sweets and food at the biggest and busiest location in Bearden.
"We wanted to expand to be able to offer meals that are allergy friendly and healthy as well," said Blackburn.
From cupcakes to fried chicken to a classic non-nut butter and jelly sandwich, everything at Free Reign is safe to eat for people with most food allergies.
"We're so thankful that we're able to provide that for people," said Blackburn. "They just are not used to being able to go into restaurants and get fries that aren't cross contaminated, but also being able to come in here for breakfast and get chicken and waffles. Like, that's just not very heard of for being big 8 allergy friendly. So it's definitely life altering for some."
That's especially true for families with a mix of allergies.
"You'll have a family who one person is free from dairy, but another person is free from nuts. And that makes it very complicated to go into somewhere and be able to get something for everybody," said Blackburn.
Now she's working hard to make good food accessible to those with food allergies like her.
"It was kind of my mission to just reconstruct all of those recipes so that it still tastes delicious and you're not focusing on 'this is good, but it still tastes a little weird,'" she said.
For others without any allergies, they just want to see how these things taste.
"They taste about the same but for me it was more, it's a different texture," said one customer, who said she'd definitely come back and try some some sweets.
"Maybe next time chocolate," she said.
There's even more to try than that.
"I think that we're getting close to 100 recipes at this point. But we're always trying to bring new products each and every week," said Blackburn.
More options for more people.