Knakal’s Bakery

I don’t write very many reviews but have to defend this bakery. I love Knakal’s and wouldn’t think of visiting Culpeper without stopping in for a treat. This isn’t a chain, but a REAL bakery with fresh cookies, cakes, pastries, and breads. Everything they sell is delicious. Three of us spent the weekend at a Culpeper B&B to celebrate a friend’s birthday. I’d ordered a carrot cake and when we picked it up the ladies sang Happy Birthday to the birthday girl. Does that sound like a rude attitude? The cake was moist and one of the best carrot cakes we’d ever eaten. And to top it off, it was only ten dollars!

Now the doughnuts are absolutely hands down the best but the customer services needs to be worked on.
Asked to use debit card and she told me why don’t you have cash. But doughnuts were the best can’t no one dare fault them on their doughnuts

If you like plain glazed donuts and aren’t looking for a large variety, this bakery is ok but i was disappointed not to find the nice cakes, tortes, tarts, fancy cookies, fresh bagels and breads that i see in bakeries up north. Maybe this is a typical southern bakery. Idk. but it’s not my kind of bakery.

We tried a few cookies… which were okay… not great… but edible. The woman who works behind the counter was so incredibly rude though it’s not worth the trip inside. If she is the owner I would suggest she hire some friendly people and then stay far away from customers herself.

The rudest people I’ve ever seen operate a business. The best doughnuts in Virginia, but not worth the depression you feel being there. When I walk up to a business I expect a smile and a «welcome, how may I help you ?» Not here! You get a :(«what do you want?» I’ve been to Germany to a place run by the ancestors of Hitler and have gotten better service. not worth it to go here, especially now that dunkin is in town !!!

Cakes delicious. Cookies pastries donuts eclairs brownies pies all delicious
It’s small. Everything goes fast. Parking is an issue.
I do have to agree the people in this place are not friendly don’t smile seem to hate their job and customers but I do stop in occasionally and on holidays to get some treats

My husband and I went into knakals for the first time today and the lady serving us was beyond rude and very unpleasant. She wanted nothing to do with us and rushed us while we were thinking about what to get. She looked like she hated life and her job. The donuts did not redeem the dissatisfaction and poor customer service. We will not be returning there we will drive 30 mins to our home town and take our business to the Red Truck Bakery where they are polite and friendly.

There’s only 2 things to say.
Awesome baked goods.
Horrible (Let me repeat myself so we are clear) Horrible customer service.
I refuse to go into the store anymore. If I want something, I send someone else. That’s how little patience I have for them. They hate answering questions and it shows in their utterly hostile attitudes when you ask them. Now that dunkin donuts is in town, I probably will just forgo them altogether to be honest. It’s not worth giving business to someone who acts like they don’t want it.

Ordered my daughter’s birthday cake from here. She and I went in on a Saturday afternoon and flipped through their catalog to pick out exactly what she wanted (she is 7 yrs old). Came in the following Saturday to pick it. She was with me and very excited to see her how her cake turned out. Well, it was absolutely NOTHING like what we ordered. Not even close. It looked as though they decided to just do whatever they wanted and completely disregarded what we picked. I guess I could be more forgiving if the cake they made was slightly close to what we ordered, but it was not even a tiny bit like what she wanted. My daughter’s eyes welled up with tears the moment she saw the cake. They offered to make another one «real fast» but I had no time to wait for that so I had no choice but to take the one they made. They then had the nerve to try and charge me for the cake, only knocking $ 10 off the price. When I questioned it several times to the lady («really, you are charging me for something you messed up? Really?) she begrudgingly agreed to let me take it at no charge.
In addition to that bad experience, I witnessed numerous rude exchanges from the staff to their customers. The employees appear to not like their jobs and seem annoyed when they get busy. Lastly — the facility. YUK! The facility is absolutely disgusting with dirt/​dust built up in every corner and paint chipping off the walls. I would hate to see what the kitchen looks like.
I’ve lived in this town almost my entire life and have heard people rave about this place (which is part of the reason I wanted to try them out). This was my first and LAST experience with them. I have no idea what the hype is about. I’ve had better experiences with grocery stores. The cake taste just like any other cake I’ve eaten so not impressed their either. This town desperately needs more selection when it comes to baked goods. I have no idea how this one has managed to stay in business.

Knackles has been a mainstay in my family for as long as I’ve been alive. I canNOT imagine visiting the Culpeper area and not visit this fabulous bakery. Yes, they don’t do fancy bagels or Bailey’s and coffee. But they do make the best homemade donuts, cakes, and rolls EVER. At prices that can’t be beat by any fancy-​schmancy all-​that-​glitters bakery in the city. What they don’t spend on accessories, they spend in their delicious food!

I can only echo here what others have said. If you come early, they have divine donuts and pastries… come later in the day and the selection is.lacking. The staff can be grumpy on bad days and perfectly nice on others. I really don’t expect much from staff in stores however — as long as they give me what I want when I want it, I could care less about their attitude. However, my sister ordered her wedding cake there and when I came to pick it up, (a small two-​tier cake) they packaged it in a cake box that was far too small, so they had to tape a plastic bag around the top to keep it from getting smushed. My sister’s wedding was being hosted over 2 hours away so I had a death grip on that cake the entire way. Not fun. If you sell cakes, you need to have proper packaging for transport. They would get two stars from me except for the fact that when I was buying some baked goods for a buddy deployed in Afghanistan, the lady gave me a discount on the cookies for the «boys». That was very kind of her and warmed my heart.

I have been here twice thirty min drive for me. Rude rude rude. Then after being rude gave me wrong doughnuts. I called to go back and get the correct ones and was told sold out. Let me say I have not been in a bakery this good since I was a child everything delicious but the older woman is sooo very rude I was very taken back by it. Really sad because just the smell reminds me of crumbs bakery in Hilton village a staple of my childhood. I’ll give 5 Sars ONLY for their product service gets a ZERO. Cheer up bakery people!!!

The service was so poor here — perhaps the most rude I’ve ever experienced in a retail environment — that my one star is largely based upon that experience. Condescending, disinterested, openly rude. So this is my story. My aunt and I had just left the Culpeper hospital where we met with my father’s doctor regarding the decision to put him in hospice care. We were exhausted and sad. Before we headed back to Richmond I asked my aunt if she wanted to stop at Knakal’s to try their rolls. We were thinking that they might be a nice compliment to the Kite’s Ham that we had discussed serving following my Pop’s imminent service. We parked right in front and walked right in. I was immediately embarrassed that I had touted this place. Someone’s jacket and purse were thrown over one of the displays and it wasn’t even moved as we tried to look into the display. There were two employees out front. The employee that helped us was impatient, sarcastic and just nasty. We first asked to see the difference in size of the rolls and the employee huffed and grabbed them from the display that was covered with a coat and held them out horizontally, where we couldn’t see a thing. After we struggled to see them she rolled her eyes and held them up vertically where we could then easily see the difference. Several times I even looked at the other employee in disbelief! A Knakals cake — specifically coconut — was always considered a big treat in our household! I was so embarrassed for my aunt! After much huffing and puffing by the employee, we were able to select our items. We paid and left and had a wonderful experience at the other shops we briefly visited on Davis. My aunt and I remarked about how rude the employee was and the oddness of having stuff just thrown on the display. And the further oddness of it not being moved when we were clearly trying to look in the display. When we returned to our car, the store was closed, lights out. Ah! A little light went off in our tired little heads. We must have come in right before closing. Thus the jacket and purse on the display and the inexcusable attitude. Unfortunately the open door and lights on have that «open for business» feel. Regardless, the behavior was completely unacceptable. Thankfully, the other shops we went on were bustling with energy and a warm and appreciative welcome. Thanks but no thanks. We’ll find our rolls elsewhere, ladies.

Our family has been ordering birthday cakes every year for 23 years! They’ve always been helpful in the design of the cakes for the children or the couple that we’ve ordered for weddings. I have tried other bakeries and have been disappointed. They have fabulous donuts and other items as well. Awesome place!

Every time we go to Culpeper we run into people who tell us to go to Knakal’s Bakery on Davis St. Davis St is a very typical modern American nostalgic Main St USA. It has boutique stores, a couple of nice restaurants, a diner, a coffee shop (not Starbucks, thankfully) and other odds and sods. Among these is the much hyped Knakals.
How do I put this without sounding as though I love to be miserable, as some guy responded to one of my earlier less than five star reviews? Over hyped is probably the best description. There is nothing particularly special about this bakery except that it is the only bakery on Davis St. Maybe my expectations have been raised too high having lived a significant portion of my life in Europe, where the local bakery is a staple of life in many communities. There, numerous assortments of breads are baked and sold, myriad pastries are available, single baked products are lined up neatly for consumers to buy, and something simple like running an errand or grabbing a quick bite connects you to previous generations.
At Knakals, you can buy some ok biscuits, an ok cupcake (that the teller placed in a paper bag so by the time I opened the bag in the car, it was a frosting ringed disaster), some cookies and a cake or other sweet concoction. In truth, most larger grocery stores, ie Wegmans and Whole Foods, have better bakeries offering better baked goods. I’d rather shop at a local place, but if the wares aren’t better, why bother? Also, the staff at Knakals were somewhat rude constantly yelling «who’s next?» even though there were only four people in the store.
It is always busy though, so good for them. I doubt it will miss our business.

Its basically a grocery bakery on the main street. Staff was hasty and a little rude. Biscuits are meh. Much better biscuits over at Frost Café! They have donuts, which look ok. Cupcakes were ok. Nothing to rave about. A little too sugary on the icing. They need to not put the cupcakes in paper bags. To me, a legit bakery should at least have artisan breads. This place did not. Disappointed.

(Consider this a 2−½ Star review. While 2 of the 4 varieties of pastry we sampled were excellent, the other 2 plus the outrageously lousy customer service were a definite buzzkill.)
After reading some recent positive Unilocal reviews — particularly that to get the good stuff here one has to be an early bird — we popped over at 7:30 a.m. this past Thurs. (they open at 7 a.m.) to see if a 3^rd visit might be a charm. We hadn’t been back since our last visit in 2010.
There were a couple of people leaving as we entered, but we were then alone with full display cases of the usual sweet cakes & cookies — & doughnuts. Doughnuts still warm from the oven or fryer or whatever. There the fun sort of ended.
I hope someone from Knakel’s reads these reviews, because they have a REALLY SERIOUS customer service problem. The lone middle-​aged woman behind the counter had a puss on her like she’d been sucking lemons for breakfast. Even looking her square in the eye with a big smile on my face had zero effect.
I cheerfully pointed at the stuffed doughnuts & asked what they were filled with, but before I even had Word 1 out of my mouth, she had a bag open & started filling it. And what a LOOK I got when I explained that I just wanted to know what the fillings were first — like that was some sort of oddball question since there are no signs or anything descriptive in the doughnut case. She rattled off several fillings so quickly I couldn’t catch them, & I was NOT going to ask her to repeat herself. And when I pointed to some Italian pastries (Sfogliatelle) & was about to ask about their filling, all she snapped at me was «Those are $ 1.35 apiece» — still standing there snapping that paper bag around. Geesh. (Remember — we were the ONLY customers in the store.)
I mentioned to her that we were going to buy a selection, & would need a box rather than a bag. Another snap — «How many?». «Eight.» She looked pissed that I was correct — that we WOULD need a box.
We ended up with 2 jelly doughnuts, 2 glazed doughnut twists, 2 chocolate-​glazed doughnuts filled with overly-​sweet pastry cream (I thought they were custard-​filled, but wasn’t in the mood to ask another question of this witch), & 2 of the «$ 1.35 apiece» Sfogliatelles (also filled with overly-​sweet pastry cream).
The jelly doughnuts & glazed doughnut twists — still warm — were ethereal. The raspberry jelly filling tasted like real raspberries — very intense — & was still warm inside the doughnuts. The sugar glaze on the glazed doughnut twists was done with a light touch — perfect! It will be worth risking the wrath of the Knakel Gorgon to enjoy those again. The Sfogliatelle’s pastry was soggy & the filling WAY too sweet. Chocolate-​glazed — overly sweet in both chocolate & filling. If they offer custard-​filled, that I might try. But then I’d have to ask a question — lol!
Bill came to $ 7 & change.
Bottom Line: Go early for the warm sugar-​glazed & jelly doughnuts; beware of anything with the achingly overly-​sweet white pastry cream filling. And, as a few others here have also mentioned — don’t expect much in the way of customer service.

Locals love this place as it has been a staple in the community for years. As a «newcomer» I was less impressed. I understand that they do things the «old fashioned» way, and I appreciate that. But… a good bakery is a good bakery. If you have elves sprinkling magic unicorn dust or if you bake it in a 1000 year old oven, I don’t care. I want a good product at the end of the day. Their doughnuts are good, not great. I would say they are average. I would not go out of my way for these baked goods. It’s also a bit concerning that the baked goods are always left in the case after hours. Do they sell these the next day? Don’t you think this would attract insects/rodents?Just my thinking.
Bottom Line: Another small town establishment that gets by on their history in the community not because of a superb product. This bakery is not winning any awards from «newcomers» but locals will rave about them because they grew up on it.

I asked around town… as I am new to the area and was told that Knakal’s was to die for! So, I was initially surprised that there was no parking… but I found street parking. I entered a tiny… tiny…bakery where people were packed in like sausages waiting. As patrons cleared out and we were the next in line… the cashier proceeded to continue socializing with another customer for minutes on end. Just as I was ready to just leave… she asked if she could help me.
I ordered the jelly doughnuts, paid, and got out of there… vowing never to return because of the lack of customer service. However,…the doughnuts absolutely MELTED IN YOUR MOUTH!!! Dare I say it??? I do believe that they were the best that I have ever had!
Hence the 3 stars… the food is delicious… but the service is ABSOLUTELY LOUSY! Will I go back??? Not sure… the verdict is still out. Besides, there are too many other bakeries that offer FANTASTIC service!

I love, love, love their glazed doughnuts and apple fritters! I live in CT but when I come home to VA, this is one of the places I always stop.