Let Tacoma eat cake! Cat & Rabbitt is opening a slice shop in a new location
The Cat & Rabbitt, the Tacoma-born cake bakery that speedily amassed a cult following when it opened with just a walk-up window on Sixth Avenue in 2020, will return to its hometown this spring after a nearly two-year hiatus.
Owners Terryn Abbitt and Julia (Catherine) Brown confirmed Friday they would open a slice shop in partnership with chef Kyle Campisi and Sliced, his New York-style deli set to open soon at Museum of Glass. The cakes themselves will be baked at their own brick-and-mortar bakery in downtown Puyallup, which they built from scratch over two years and opened in 2024.
The Cat & Rabbitt Tacoma will mimic the original experience in signage, flavors and process, they said, minus production. That means the same monthly flavors written on butcher paper and the cakes stored whole in the refrigerator, sliced to order and served only in takeout boxes.
True believers already know about the pastry duo’s commitment to from-scratch ingredients and, when available, fresh, local fruit. Instead of extra sugar, they enhance flavors through the likes of fruit-juice soaks. In five years, they have sold more than 100,000 slices of cake and created hundreds of flavors. Favorites include Bill’s Banana Brown Butter, named after a regular, and a very-carrot carrot that blows all other carrots out of the soil. Among the many: sticky toffee pudding, chocolate salted caramel, raspberry coconut, marionberry goat cheese, strawberry passionfruit poppyseed, meyer lemon meringue.
Fans also line up for the shop’s incredible brioche-dough cinnamon rolls, served only on Sundays — and you’ll find them at Museum of Glass then, too (until sold out, that is).
Abbitt and Brown plan to deliver cake to the Tacoma slice shop a few times a week, pending demand and availability, and ensuring The Cat & Rabbitt is shining brightly again in Tacoma.
The pastry chefs have been friends for a decade, dating to their time at E9 X Group Catering, where they met Campisi. A few years ago, he started his own catering company and recently landed the museum cafe contract. At Sliced, developed with the support of chef Victor Mitchell, he will serve thoughtful sandwiches, including a hefty corned beef on rye, an unctuous cheesesteak and a truer-than-most Italian sub, plus sides of potato, pasta or asparagus-snap pea salad.
Understanding that the location on Thea Foss Waterway, connected to downtown most directly by the Bridge of Glass footbridge, has been notoriously difficult to sustain, Campisi plans to offer delivery and catering for office lunches or similar group events. The museum’s galleries will be undergoing a major renovation this year, which will make having a destination-worthy option for food and coffee all the more relevant.
Campisi’s delivery focus also swayed Abbitt and Brown to say yes when he approached them with the partnership idea — they’ve been surprised at how many slices of cake they sell through DoorDash from the Puyallup shop, said Abbitt, and they trust Campisi to honor their brand’s ethos.
Campisi even joked that the tagline might be: “Come for the cake, stay for the sandwiches.”
He has an entire three-door cooler and refrigerated display case awaiting The Cat & Rabbitt’s cakes, and staff will be trained by Brown and Abbitt.
The duo has been looking for another Tacoma location since they left the walk-up window on Sixth Avenue, inside The Pine Room Events Center, in spring 2024. They first leased the Puyallup building at 111 Stewart Ave. in 2022, where they have a spacious production space that was set up to accommodate wholesale. After receiving final approval from the Washington State Department of Agriculture, which oversees wholesale food operations instead of local health departments, they were ready to share the news.
They “have high hopes,” added Abbitt, and they’re excited to get started. “We have a lot of loyal fans.”
The Cat & Rabbitt Tacoma
- Museum of Glass, 1801 Dock St., Tacoma, thecatandrabbitt.com
- Anticipated hours: Wednesday-Sunday 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (or until sold out)
- Details: popular cake shop opening slice shop inside new deli; target opening by April, follow instagram.com/catandrabbittcake for updates