Angel Food Bakery is leaving downtown Minneapolis and relocating to St. Louis Park

The past few days haven't been easy on the vitality of downtown Minneapolis.

First, Target told the world that 3,500 company employees will not be returning to their offices in the City Center complex.

Now, on a smaller scale — but a big deal to downtown doughnut lovers — Angel Food Bakery chef/owner Katy Gerdes announced on Instagram that she's giving up her bakery's home at 9th and Marquette.

"With the continuing blows about offices and business not coming back any time soon, I have exhausted all my options for the business surviving in the downtown area," she wrote. "I adore Minneapolis and cannot wait to see it shine again, but, unfortunately, after just shy of nine years it is time for us to say goodbye to downtown."

There's a silver lining: The bakery, which grew out of the adjacent Hell's Kitchen restaurant, is relocating to the Texa-Tonka shopping center in St. Louis Park.

Along with featuring its full line of doughnuts, pastries, cupcakes, cookies and other sweets, the bakery will include a coffee bar with a menu that will include brewed coffee, espresso and cold press, plus kombucha on tap and tea lattes. The beans are coming from Folly Coffee, a small-batch roaster that's also located in St. Louis Park.

Gerdes is also reserving a portion of the space to make a permanent home for FrioFrio (frio is Spanish for cold), the five-year-old paletas business that she and Chris Weber have been operating at summer festivals out of an eye-catching pedal-propelled cart.

Their refreshing "Ice Lollies" — think of them as deeply colorful Popsicle-like frozen treats made with fresh fruits and vegetables — feature such combinations as watermelon-mint, grapefruit-carrot-ginger, blackberry-cream, strawberry-balsamic-basil and kiwi-apple-kale.

They're calling FrioFrio's brick-and-mortar home an "ice cream speakeasy" because the plan is to also sell boozy frozen drinks.

Angel Food's downtown location has not been open to walk-up customers since the start of the pandemic, but the kitchen has been turning out temptations for overnight shipping all over the country.

"It just saved us," Gerdes told Fox 9. "And it put us in a great position going forward."

In its new home, set to open in early summer, Angel Food will share patio space with a branch of Revival that's now under construction. It looks like dining is going to play a major role at the newly reborn Texa-Tonka, which is located at Texas Avenue and Minnetonka Boulevard. (The 70-year-old strip mall was renovated last year by owner Paster Properties.)

Revival owners Thomas Boemer and Nick Rancone announced in November that their fried chicken-focused restaurant was opening a Texa-Tonka outpost. Another restaurant — Brito's Burritos — is also under construction, joining longtime tenant Best of India.

In other Angel Food news, the bakery's outpost at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport is back up and running, after a yearlong pause. Find it at Terminal 1's gate E5, open 5 to 11 a.m. Thursday through Monday.