Charmed Restaurant, a Mount Vernon spot serving homey dishes inspired by its founders’ Mennonite roots, marked five years in business in January. A few months later, the owner Danae Schrock and her sister, Donna Borntrager, decided it was time for a change.

Last week, their restaurant became a bakery. “We’re trying to figure out what works or what doesn’t,” Schrock told me.

In Downtown Baltimore, another restaurant is making tweaks after just a few months in business. And in Harbor Point, a hotel dining spot will end its affiliation with the Foreman Wolf restaurant group and take a new direction in 2025.

It seems it’s the season of rebranding. I have more details on all three in this week’s column.

‘Charmed’ cookies and cakes

As is the case for many restaurants, January and July were usually the slowest months for Charmed, a small eatery on Calvert Street. This year, however, business dragged even more than usual, said co-owner Danae Schrock.

“The restaurant just wasn’t very profitable,” she said. But there was one silver lining: Charmed was selling “a lot” of baked goods.

The restaurant’s fresh-baked chocolate chip and snickerdoodle cookies were bestsellers, Schrock said, and Charmed had established some wholesale contracts with Lord Baltimore Hotel, Baltimore Center Stage, Everyman Theatre and Charm City Meadworks, which sold their cookies and cakes.

“We would have liked to bake more, but we just didn’t have time or space to do that,” she said.

So in mid-July, Schrock and her sister and Charmed co-owner Donna Borntrager decided to make time, announcing that the restaurant would close July 27 to make way for a bakery. On Thursday, Charmed will reopen with a focus on cookies, cakes, scones and homemade biscuits. They’re hoping to grow their wholesale baking business as well as custom orders.

“We’re just hoping to kind of bake a bunch of things and see what happens,” Schrock said.

The sisters are still working out logistics, but plan for Charmed to be open Mondays through Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. for the month of August. They could adjust the schedule as they figure out what customers want.

To that end, Schrock plans to spend a day this week learning to make her mom’s cinnamon buns, a favorite whenever they make an appearance at Charmed.

“They sell out every time she comes to Baltimore,” she said.

A ‘Proper’ rebranding

Crunching the numbers also led Berry Clark to conclude it was time for a change at Prim & Proper.

The Downtown Baltimore restaurant, a collaboration between Clark, a partner in Papi Cuisine, and the OutKrowd Restaurant Group run by BLK Swan restaurateur Chris Simon, opened in February and was billed as an “elevated” dining experience, with a dress code and a French-inspired menu.

But when OutKrowd’s team stepped away from Prim & Proper this summer to focus on other projects, Clark — a self-professed “data guy” with a background in search engine optimization — had a chance to dig into the data.

“I was able to look at what the consumers were saying when they came into the space, when it came to the type of food they were looking for, how they were approaching the concept,” he said.

His conclusion: “We need a little bit of a more casual environment.”

Clark said nearby office workers told him they wanted to stop in for an after-work drink or meal, but feel intimidated by the dress code. The restaurant’s new iteration, launching this week, will do away with those requirements.

Under the rebranding, Prim & Proper will become Proper Cuisine, and will incorporate some of the Caribbean flavors that are a hit at Papi Cuisine, which Clark runs with business partner Alex Perez.

“We needed to have a little more casual environment,” Clark said.

He said there’s no bad blood between him and Simon, who left to focus on BLK Swan and his new role as chair of the advisory council of the Black Leadership Circle, an Associated Black Charities initiative.

“This decision reflects our reprioritization to maximize our broader impact, not a conflict,” Simon said in a statement. “We wish Clark continued success.”

Across the block, Clark’s restaurant group, Clark Hospitality, also recently took over the historic Werner’s Diner, in business on Redwood Street since 1950. Clark preserved the restaurant’s retro feel and many of its diner bites while ramping up marketing of the spot.

Werner’s social media following has since grown from 45 followers to nearly 9,000, he said. On the weekends, “we have lines out the door.”

Farewell to Cindy Lou

Another prominent Baltimore restaurant group is cutting ties with a Harbor Point restaurant.

Cindy Lou’s Fish House, a joint venture between Foreman Wolf and Beatty Development Group, will no longer be a part of the Foreman Wolf portfolio.

Both sides say there are no hard feelings. Foreman Wolf’s president and CEO, Tony Foreman, said the company needed to focus on its other restaurants, including The Duchess, a new concept serving cuisine from Guam that’s slated to open in Hampden this fall.

“This has been a terrific partnership and experience with Beatty Development Group, and (developer Michael Beatty) in particular, who gave us the opportunity to collaborate in the design and development of a unique, Southern-inspired restaurant concept in a hotel setting and at the water’s edge of Baltimore’s iconic harbor,” Foreman said in a statement.

Cindy Lou’s, which serves Southern dishes like seafood perlauand fried chicken with biscuits, opened inside the Canopy by Hilton hotel in 2020. The restaurant will be operated by the hotel’s management company, Donohoe Hospitality Services, and is expected to rebrand in 2025.