A Durham dining institution has been sold. Meet the new owner of Guglhupf.

A Durham dining pioneer and restaurant institution is embarking on a new era.

Guglhupf, the popular German bakery and cafe named for a spiral dome-shaped cake, has a new owner. Co-founder and longtime owner Claudia Kemmet-Cooper sold Guglhupf to Sean Scott, a North Carolina transplant who co-founded the decade-old Subculture Coffee brand in Florida.

The Guglhupf sale closed June 26, said Scott, who has been getting acquainted with the restaurant and bakery for the past six months. Scott said he hopes the ownership change will be undetectable to diners, as he vows to keep Guglhupf much the same.

“I’m really thrilled to take over such a beloved, established local business,” Scott said. “We have a lot of cool things in mind but I don’t want to disrupt what people love about Guglhupf....I’m not trying to fix something that’s not broken.”

Guglhupf’s beginnings

Kemmet-Cooper first opened Guglhupf as a bakery in 1998 with former business partner Hartmut Jahn.

Over a span of two-and-a-half decades, the popular Durham bakery evolved into a cafe and also a restaurant and biergarten, eventually expanding to include a retail shop in Chapel Hill.

Guglhupf has been one of the Triangle’s most popular and influential bakeries since it opened and continues to send its breads and pastries to specialty markets and cafes around Durham. The cafe is popular for breakfast and lunch, and on weekends Guglhupf is often packed as one of the Triangle’s top brunch spots.

The Guglhupf menu stands out locally as one of the very few German restaurants in the Triangle, serving crispy schnitzel and sausages and a deep taplist of German beers.

Kemmet-Cooper did not respond to requests for comment on the sale.

The sale is only for Guglhupf and its business assets and does not include the restaurant’s property, which Kemmet-Cooper continues to own.

Guglhupf’s new owner

After spending his 20s playing music and working in an art gallery, Sean Scott got into the food industry about 13 years ago.

“As a musician, I had fallen in love with these spaces around food and beverage, always feeling at home in different ones,” Scott said. “It became my Plan B if music didn’t work out. I started my first coffee shop before I ever worked in one.”

Subculture opened in West Palm Beach and now has four locations.

Then in the early months of the COVID pandemic, Scott moved to North Carolina settling his family in Winston-Salem and opening Known Coffee Roasters. That brand closed last year, but by then Scott had made a home in North Carolina and decided to look for another food venture.

In January, Scott said he saw Guglhupf for sale online and the combination of a bakery, cafe and biergarten intrigued him.

“I had an eye out for a local brand that was something I could elevate,” Scott said. “I came out for a visit and (Guglhupf) totally aligned with my background and I started seeing the future it could have.”

Scott said Kemmet-Cooper will remain involved as an advisor through a transition period and that the restaurant’s staff will all remain.

“Claudia has done an amazing job for 25 years,” Scott said. “She said it was always her plan to retire after 25 years so I think this sale is in keeping that promise to herself.”

There have been a few early changes and a few more on the way, Scott said, but all are meant to be cosmetic. There is some new outdoor furniture, and Scott plans to rework Guglhupf’s website to make online ordering easier.

“There are kind of a lot of small touches, but that’s all they are,” Scott said. “Because of the history and tradition here, I want to honor that. It would be foolish of me to jump in and change a lot. I’m here to learn the culture of this area and get to know my staff and customers.”

In Guglhupf and Durham, Scott said he was attracted to the youthfulness of a college town.

“I love areas that have universities, the energy they bring is really hard to get elsewhere, you can’t manufacture that,” Scott said.