Stephanie Spear 
Popular Northern Virginia bakery Bakeshop is opening its third location on Saturday, June 20th. The bakery, known for its nostalgic sweets, cookies, cakes, breakfast items, and neighborhood feel, is opening inside the former Skorpios space at 421 Maple Avenue E in Vienna. The long-running Greek restaurant was a Vienna staple for decades, making this new chapter especially meaningful for the town and for Bakeshop. Read on for more about Bakeshop and its new Vienna location.
The Backstory Behind Bakeshop
Justin Stegall grew up in Great Falls and learned baking by doing: teaching himself, testing recipes, and obsessing over the details until each item felt right. After spending time in New York apprenticing at a bakery in Red Hook, Brooklyn, he returned to Northern Virginia around 2004 and began building what would eventually become Bakeshop. At first, that meant baking from home, making deliveries, and trying to grow a customer base one order at a time. “I started baking out of my mom’s kitchen and doing deliveries,” Justin said.
He began by perfecting individual recipes, starting with chocolate chip cookies, then moving on to cakes, cupcakes, and other baked goods. The goal was simple: create the kind of bakery he wished existed locally when he was growing up. “I was good at making things. I really liked to eat them,” Justin said. “There weren’t a lot of things around here that were for people that liked that kind of stuff. So I decided to just create it.”
The timing helped, too. Justin started building Bakeshop around the same time Yelp was becoming popular, and word of mouth began to spread online. From there, he started selling his baked goods at Murky Coffee in Arlington, which gave the business even more exposure.
“Then the ball started rolling,” he said. Bakeshop’s first storefront opened in 2010 at 1025 N. Fillmore Street in Arlington, a location Justin said felt natural to him. The second location opened in 2019 at 100 E. Fairfax Street in Falls Church, where the business grew in new ways, especially with breakfast.
Now, the business is a family affair. Justin’s wife, Mai, works full-time in the business and was key in getting the Vienna location designed and built. “We are a husband and wife team,” Justin said. “It’s been really lovely working with her.” During The Fairfax Girl’s pre-opening visit, Justin’s mom, Linda, in whose kitchen the business was born, was at the Vienna shop hand-stamping shopping bags.
Vienna Expansion
Vienna had been on Justin’s radar for years. When it came time to think about another Bakeshop location, Justin said the decision came down to timing and the right space. Falls Church came first, but Vienna was always a place Justin could picture the business growing into. “I love the community aspect of it,” Justin said. “I like that it still looks the same way that it did when I was a kid. It feels the same.”
“Finding real estate open in Vienna is not easy,” Justin said. “Things do not open up here a lot.” Then came the former Skorpio’s space at 421 Maple Avenue E. Skorpio’s had been a Vienna staple for nearly 30 years, and residents were heartbroken when the Maggio family announced the restaurant’s closure in June 2024.
Justin understood what it meant to take over such a well-known address. He said he was sad to see Skorpio’s go, but if the space was going to become something new, he hoped Bakeshop could honor the spirit of what had been there before. “It was an institution,” Justin said. “Hopefully we’ll end up filling the shoes of that institution.”
Read more: All About Vienna’s Pear Tree Cottage
At first, imagining Bakeshop inside the space was not easy. “When something like Skorpio’s has been there so long, it’s hard to imagine anything else,” Justin said. But as the space was gutted and the buildout began, the vision became clearer. Now, Justin feels like the team has nailed the look and feel of the new shop. “I feel like we’ve really nailed this one from a buildout,” he said.
What to Expect at the Vienna Location
The Vienna Bakeshop will have the familiar items customers already love, plus some new additions specific to this location. Guests can expect coffee, sweets, cakes, cookies, breakfast sandwiches, and a full Bakeshop menu. Justin said this shop will also have more room for customers to sit, relax, and stay awhile compared to some of the other locations. “This one’s got some space to sit down and relax and have a coffee, be with a friend, that kind of thing,” he said.
The menu will continue to evolve once the shop opens, something Justin said happens naturally at each location. Falls Church, for example, became especially breakfast-heavy because customers embraced that part of the menu. Each shop has taken on its own personality, and Justin likes it that way. “I kind of let the customers drive where it’s going to be,” he said.
View this post on Instagram
New and returning items planned for the Vienna location include a black and white cookie, the return of the salty oat apricot cookie, Boston cream pie, and Boston cream pie cupcakes. The Boston cream pie idea came from Justin’s friend in Vienna who regularly requests it as a birthday cake. There may also be a small nod to the building’s Skorpios history. Justin said the team has talked about adding something gyro-inspired to the sandwich or breakfast sandwich menu.
As for his own favorite menu items, Justin is a cookie person. His go-to is the salty oat chocolate chunk cookie, and he also loves the oatmeal cream pie, which he described as nostalgic and classic. “I like the things that are nostalgic,” Justin said. “Classic stuff that’s really good.”
See more: Why Virginia Drivers Can’t Resist a Vanity Plate
Beyond the food, Justin is excited to meet a new customer base and bring local employees into the fold. Bakeshop often hires high school students, and he said he enjoys giving many of them their first job and helping them learn what it means to be part of a workplace and community.
“I really like to meet the new high school crop that we’ll have in here,” he said. Several alumni from other Bakeshop locations plan to be at the grand opening, which starts at 9AM on Saturday June 20th. There are also new additions to the breakfast menus, including baguettes and cinnamon rolls.
On the day of the grand opening, the Bakeshop team will have samples of some of its most popular and newest treats, and will have free cupcakes for guests while supplies last.
Bakeshop is located at 421 Maple Avenue E in Vienna, and is open seven days a week from 8AM to 3PM.
Follow @thefairfaxgirl on Instagram + TikTok for the latest Northern Virginia updates, and check out our events calendar, which has over 100+ events weekly to peruse. Sign up for our newsletter here.
