Photograph by Ben Rollins
Concealed in a suburban shopping center, Honey Birds Bakery surprises with a beautifully designed dining room—crystal chandeliers hang above olive-green banquettes—but it’s the pastries in the case that truly delight. Owned by friends Natalia Hairetis and Valeriya Zalland, Honey Birds opened nearly a year ago, bringing Russian-inspired desserts and savory delights to Alpharetta.
The bakery’s story began when Hairetis moved to Atlanta from Moscow with her then husband, an American. In Russia, she worked as an engineer designing houses, but stateside she decided to try something new after maternity leave. She turned to baking at home. Eventually, a friend asked her to make a carrot cake for a baby shower, and word spread quickly. “Everybody started calling me like, Oh Natalia, you’re doing cakes. It’s so great. It’s so beautiful. It’s so tasty,” recalls Hairetis. “And this is how I started growing. People just start ordering it. I was shocked.” She began taking baking classes and developed a knack for ornately decorated custom cakes.
Photograph by Ben Rollins
Zalland first tried one of Hairetis’s honey cakes through a mutual friend, then later connected with her through the Russian school their children attend. “We start chatting and we become friends slowly, and then we start to travel together with our kids,” says Zalland. “Then [Hairetis] came to me, and she’s like, ‘Do you want to open a business?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, why not.’” Zalland, who previously worked accounting jobs while earning her second degree, didn’t want to return to the same routine after having kids, while Hairetis needed a source of income after her divorce.
They chose the name Honey Birds as a nod to two beloved Russian desserts: caramelized honey cake and bird’s milk, a marshmallow-like confection. “It was a honey cake that brought us together,” says Zalland. They found a storefront close to home in Alpharetta, and friends introduced them to a designer who helped create a feminine space with blush-pink decor, ruffled accents, and cozy nooks where guests could linger.
You won’t find croissants or loaves of bread here. Instead, Honey Birds offers a mix of Russian-inspired pastries and European confections such as macarons. For both women, it was important that desserts be less sweet than typical store-bought American pastries. “We’ve always been on the hunt for a place that serves something where you taste the ingredients, not the sugar,” says Zalland.
That restraint doesn’t mean sacrificing indulgence. Many of the pastries share a light, airy quality. A heart-shaped mousse has a springy texture, with rich chocolate balanced by a thin layer of strawberry-raspberry filling. The signature honey cake—layered with thin sheets of cake and sour cream filling—nearly melts in your mouth, delivering a potent caramelized honey flavor.
Photograph by Ben Rollins
Then there are the custom cakes. Hairetis has tackled increasingly intricate designs, including a cellphone tower for a corporation. “The tower was tall. It was skinny, and you had to build a ladder, but it’s supposed to be edible as well,” she says. “It was pretty cool.” Cake decorating feeds an artistic side she didn’t know she had while also tapping into her engineering instincts. “You have to sit and have to think how to do that,” Hairetis says. “You have to think about how you will deliver it so it will look nice and taste good at the same time.”
The bakery also serves sandwiches—including options such as smoked salmon with cream cheese and veggie with avocado and sun-dried tomatoes on house-made sourdough focaccia. The friends hope to expand their space one day to offer a full bread program, but for now they’re focused on what they’ve built: a comfortable place where Russian-inspired desserts are shaped by their friendship.
This article appears in our March 2026 issue.
