Popular Chapel Hill bakery shuts down, leaving brides scrambling

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (WTVD) -- On its website, Sugarland claims to be North Carolina's most famous bakery, but now brides and grooms are saying it's a bakery that is leaving them scrambling for a cake right before their big day.

Sugarland was a popular bakery that had a location in Raleigh's Cameron Village and in Chapel Hill along Franklin Street. Both locations are closed, and customers say they got no notice.

Kali Pike and her fiance John Feasel paid Sugarland a $225 cake deposit in March for their October wedding. Kali says she thought all was fine until one day they stopped by the Sugarland bakery and it was closed.

"I called, I emailed, no response Looked on their Facebook page, and I saw that other couples were having the same issues that we were," Pike said.

Same problem for Ben Davis and his fiance after they paid Sugarland a cake deposit for their wedding, which is this weekend.

"The reason why we went with the bakery they had a fantastic lemon cake," Davis said.

He said he never heard from the bakery's owner, Katrina Ryan, about any problems and only learned the bakery was closed when they went to get some cupcakes.

Both couples said that with no answers from Ryan; they were forced to find other bakeries to make their wedding cakes. Both couples also said they want their deposits back from Ryan since Sugarland never fulfilled the orders.

I got in touch with Ryan, and she said they were forced to close their business after family medical issues this summer as well as several equipment issues with the business.

She also said both Hurricane Florence and Tropical Storm Michael caused flooding in her business along Franklin Street and they just couldn't recover.

"Since we are dissolving the company, there are specific procedures we need to follow in noting any creditor of the dissolution of the company," Ryan said.

She showed us a claim form for customers who gave deposits. (Were you affected? You can fill it out here). She added, "Refunds will be made as part of the dissolution process. State guidelines say that a dissolution can take 60 to 120 days, but we expect everything to be resolved in 30-45 days."