ORO VALLEY, Ariz. (KGUN) — Fourteen months ago, KGUN 9 introduced viewers to Mariam Zaky, a mother of three working full-time while running her first business. Now, her plate, or perhaps her oven, has gotten a little more full.
On Sept. 12, Zaky opened her second Breadsmith location, this time in the Catalina Foothills.
"I felt there was a need to have a store in a different area, be able to utilize an underserved market, be able to support the community there," Zaky said. "And I really fell in love with this location when I first saw it."
Getting there wasn't quick. The Catalina Foothills space used to be a financial wealth office with no plumbing and no electrical, and it took roughly nine months of renovations before it was ready to serve food.
The new store isn't a carbon copy of the original. Because the space is smaller, it can't fit the industrial oven needed to bake bread, so the Catalina Foothills location bakes only sweets in-house: cookies, scones, croissants, brioche, muffins and dessert breads. All the bread is baked overnight at the original Oro Valley store and delivered fresh each morning at 5 a.m.
Everything at both locations is made fresh daily, with no additives or preservatives, a detail Zaky said matters just as much as the expansion itself.
"So actually, here we only bake the sweets in this location," Zaky said. "All the bread comes from the other location."
Zaky bought the Oro Valley Breadsmith, which has served the community for about 12 years, in November 2024. Since then, she's kept working full-time in supply chain and finished an MBA, all while running the bakery.
She said finishing her MBA, plus a growing, more self-sufficient team at the Oro Valley store, freed up the bandwidth to take on a second location.
"I have an amazing team that now is capable of kind of running the Oro Valley store on their own," Zaky said. "So my involvement there is very little, and it gave me an opportunity to be able to expand."
Her kids are getting older too. Two are now in high school, and Zaky said that's changed the dynamic at both stores.
"They all now work in the stores," Zaky said, "and they can see how much hard work goes into it. But they can also see that if you put your mind to something, you can also achieve it."
Running two locations still means long hours, and Zaky said she leans on her faith to get through the hardest days.
"I got here today by the grace of God," she said. "Honestly, there are days I wake up and I'm like, I do not know how I'm going to move this mountain today, and it just it moves."
One thing that hasn't changed with the expansion is what happens to the food that doesn't sell. Any unsold bread and pastries are still donated to local food banks every night. On opening day alone, Zaky donated 250 loaves, matching every loaf that was sold that weekend.
"It's important to me that we have zero waste," Zaky said. "There are so many people in the community that are looking for food, that need food, that their kids don't have enough, and it's important that we are able to help with them."
The new location also leans on other local businesses. The coffee served in-store comes from Tucson Coffee Roasters, the teas come from Maya Tea in the Flowing Wells area, and Zaky said she regularly partners with other small, often women-owned, businesses in the area for things like branding and merchandise.
"It's really important to support the others in the community that are just trying to make a positive impact, just as much as you," Zaky said.
For now, Zaky said her focus is on getting the Catalina Foothills store running as smoothly as her original location. But she isn't ruling out a third Breadsmith down the road, possibly in Midtown.
"My goal is to be able to expand to all the communities that don't have a local place where they can get fresh bread, fresh pastries, no additives, no preservatives," she said.
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