Bonrue Bakery (formerly Farmstead)

From Farmstead to Bonrue

In 2021, three people opened a small European-style bakery in St. George called Farmstead — Chris Connors, Li Hsun Sun, and Chris Herrin. The pitch was simple and, for the region, unusual: laminated doughs, real viennoiserie, the kind of pastry program that takes years of practice and a serious cold proofer rather than a freezer case from a foodservice supplier. The St. George market in 2021 had plenty of cake-and-cookie shops and a thinning row of franchise donut counters, but nothing built around croissants you can hear when you bite them.

Months after Farmstead opened, Chris Herrin passed away. Connors and Sun kept the bakery running, and the room kept growing — first as a local favorite among the Bloomington and Little Valley crowds who’d been driving up to Salt Lake for that kind of pastry, then as a destination for the snowbird half of the city, who knew exactly what a kouign-amann was supposed to taste like and started telling each other about it.

The 2025 Rebrand and the Wasatch Front

In May 2025, the bakery rebranded as Bonrue Bakery, following a strategic transition that came with plans for a Wasatch Front expansion. The pastry program — laminated croissants, kouign-amann, fruit tarts, viennoiserie morning bake — stayed essentially intact, and the St. George flagship continues to operate at the original address. The rebrand was covered locally by Fox 13, the St. George News, and Utah Business; the consensus reporting is that the smell of the place didn’t change.

Bonrue in the 435

Bonrue is rare in the 435 in another sense: a Southern Utah food brand that grew north into the Wasatch Front rather than the other way around. Most of the food expansion in the area runs the opposite direction — a Salt Lake or Provo concept opens a St. George location once the demographics tip — and Bonrue is one of the few going from Washington County up to Utah County and Salt Lake County instead. For a register of locally owned Southern Utah businesses, it is a clean listing: founded here, named founders, a publicly documented evolution, and a pastry program doing something specific and hard rather than something general and easy.