From Bakery to Restaurant: Mr. Bonbon’s Community-Driven Growth

From Small Bakery to Full-Service Restaurant

Not every rebuild starts with a big team. Sometimes, it starts with the community.

Starting with Filipino Baking and Family Recipes

Husband-wife duo Grace and Jeremy McGee built a cult following with Mr. Bonbon, their Indianapolis-based Filipino bakery, selling ube macarons and cakes at farmers markets and specialty stores. “We started with the bakery,” Grace McGee says. “We wanted to do more of, like, a fusion with the Filipino and French at first and then we decided why not?”

“A lot of people decided that they would like to have more of the savory food,” she adds. “Me and my husband decided, OK, why not try something like a burger or empanada, something that the other non-Filipinos would enjoy as well. We already had the baking we’re really good at, and then to integrate that into a restaurant seemed like a pretty natural decision for us.”

Learning On the Job Without Formal Culinary Training

Grace McGee leaned on her family recipes as a second-generation Filipina, and on a passion for cooking and baking she shares with her husband, to experiment and grow further. “Neither one of us has culinary school or anything like that in our background. We just like to cook—and have gotten better at it,” Jeremy McGee says. 

Leveraging Community for Growth

Demand grew after they began selling at the Philippine Cultural Community Center in South Indy. “There is a Filipino center that people go to if they want to do some kind of Filipino gathering and events,” says Grace McGee. “That’s where we actually started a restaurant … so that we can at least have established Filipino people coming in already. Filipinos live in different pockets of Indy, but there are organizations that help bring everyone together.”

That turned into a pop-up restaurant at the center featuring empanadas with scratch-made dough, housemade longanisa sausage from an heirloom family recipe, burgers with housemade buns and Filipino vinegar-spiked sauces alongside mango and ube cakes.

“Almost everything we make is from scratch,” says Jeremy McGee. “Even for our empanadas—we make the dough ourselves because it was pretty easy to go from making pies to making empanadas. Right now, our pork belly empanada is our bestseller, but the chicken is also a popular one because chicken is something everybody’s really familiar with.” (To learn about how empanadas are trending and check out some other trends for 2026, click here).

Signature Dishes and Scratch-Made Excellence

Signature cakes remain the anchor. “The mango and the ube cake are big ones,” says Grace McGee, who leaned on her community for feedback. “Those two specific cakes are very popular in the Philippines. I took recipes and I tweaked them to get it where I wanted it to, and then, over the course of a couple of months, we would have people try and tell us what they think and get feedback and make little adjustments. We’ve got it now to where they really like it.”

“The center’s been a great spot for us to start because we don’t have training or professional experience, we’re self-taught,” Jeremy McGee adds. “We’ve been able to get in there and use the equipment and learn how to run a restaurant—because starting a restaurant from total scratch is super difficult. Everyone that comes in the building loves the food and they keep coming back.”

Scaling Through Collaboration

The momentum from their community has continued. The owner of a local Hawaiian-inspired lunch spot invited them to serve dinner, and at press time, the couple was preparing for a potential partnership and expansion.

“For us to be able to sort of piggyback off the success of another restaurant and share that space together, I think is going to help us a lot,” Grace McGee says. “Our community has been so integral to our continued growth.”

To hear from more US Foods customers and chef/owners who have taken steps to take better care of themselves and their teams, click here