Photo by Jon Anderson.
Marta Hill, the owner of Marta’s Bakery in the Cahaba Heights makes a miniature bundt poundcake.
Marta Hill opened Marta’s Bakery in Cahaba Heights in 1990, and after 34 years, she’s preparing to retire and hand the bakery over to someone else.
Hill turns 70 on March 17 and plans to sell the bakery to one of her employees, Carley Wrensted, on that date. Wrensted has been with her about four years, she said. “She’s sharp, and she’s very talented.”
Hill will stay on part-time for a while to help with the transition.
She started Marta’s Bakery when she was working part-time for a catering business and the owner closed and gave her some of her customers. “I had $300, a mixer, a spatula and some bowls,” Hill said.
She began with pound cakes, then slowly added other items — banana bread, cookies, brownies, pies, cakes, other sweets, yeast rolls, cheese straws, chicken salad, pimiento cheese, congealed fruit salad, chicken tetrazzini, chicken pot pie, other casseroles, side dishes and soups.
She originally opened in a small space at 3160 Cahaba Heights Road, then moved in 1993 to where the Cahaba Heights Starbucks is now, before moving to her current location at 3936 Crosshaven Drive in 1994. At first, she split the 800-square-foot space with her then-husband Mike Hill’s Yankee Pizzeria, but he moved the pizzeria, and she took over the whole space.
It was hard at first, especially when the economy slowed down in 2008 and she had to run it by herself for three or four months, but the bakery never lost money, Hill said.
She has loved it but knows it’s time to go, she said. “I want to do fundraisers and work for some charities. There are other things to do than work hard for a living. It’s time to give back now.”
