A viral Fort Lauderdale baker thought her missing cinnamon rolls were stolen. Turns out, they went missing during an immigration bust.
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College student Julie Pierre, 21, took to social media last Saturday to tell her almost half-million followers that thousands of dollars worth of cinnamon rolls had disappeared after a routine Uber delivery pickup for her bakery, Roll & Dough.
Pierre said she had hired the rideshare driver for transporting 350 fresh-baked pastries (valued at $3,100) intended for sale at Hollywood’s Yellow Green Farmers Market. When the rolls failed to show up, and the driver went silent, she reached the conclusion that the Uber driver must’ve taken them.
“Our Uber driver stole over 300 cinnamon rolls that we were supposed to bring to our farmers market, and I don’t think you guys understand how unbelievable that is,” she posted last weekend. She shared screenshots of the order with her 476,000 followers.”
Uber’s response was swift, with spokesperson Sarah Casasnovas telling the Sun Sentinel that, based on the information it had at the time, the platform had “removed the driver’s access to the platform” and the company stood “ready to support law enforcement with their investigation.”
But there was a hitch in this cinnamon roll heist theory: It never happened.
The Uber driver had, in fact, been “taken into custody” by U.S. Border Patrol while delivering the baked treats that morning, according to the Sunrise Police Department.
“A theft did not occur,” Officer Victor Fortune, a Sunrise police spokesperson, said via email late Thursday afternoon. “During the encounter [with U.S. Border Patrol], the driver was permitted to contact another individual to take possession of the vehicle, which contained the cinnamon rolls and associated storage containers.”
The person who took the arrested Uber driver’s vehicle “later contacted the Sunrise Police Department to coordinate the return of the items,” the email said, and police returned the rolls to Pierre on Thursday.
Reached by phone Thursday evening, Pierre said: “We had to throw them all away. We’re still out $3,100. Stolen or not, we suffered a loss.”
A viral sensation
Roll & Dough has attracted hundreds of customers to its farmers market stall since it began selling rolls there on Aug. 1, turning out flavors such as apple pie, blueberry cobbler and Biscoff cookie butter.
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Pierre, a Florida International University student majoring in criminal justice, said she created her cinnamon roll side hustle as a survival strategy after her financial aid got delayed.
At her strip-mall commissary kitchen in west Sunrise, Pierre and three assistant bakers take turns rolling and sheeting dough, before covering it in fillings such as blueberry streusel and cinnamon-coated apples that she mixes by hand.
Ten straight hours of baking are edited into 90-second reels of prep work on Roll & Dough’s social pages, which Pierre, who is soft-spoken yet brutally honest, overlays with confessional voiceovers.
“My body is traumatized from the amount of work I put myself through,” Pierre said in a recent video. “But this kitchen makes me feel like I’m not working despite the fact that I clearly am.”
Pierre said it’s her narrations that “probably made me go viral.”
“It was insane. I still don’t believe the bakery is this big. It hasn’t really settled in my mind yet,” Pierre said.
On Saturday, customers waited in line at Roll & Dough’s stall, while news of the missing rolls spread.
“I’m not sure Julie knows how big she is,” said Wendy Almonte, who stood second in line as the stall opened at 11 a.m. “She has a goldmine in her hands.”
After the missing-rolls announcement, Pierre created a GoFundMe account, which has raised more than $4,110 as of Thursday evening.
Sun Sentinel features writer Phillip Valys can be reached at [email protected] or Twitter/X @philvalys.
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