This Former Gophers Running Back Is Now Slingin’ Tacos and THC Treats

Visit Bald Head Bakery’s Instagram page and you’ll find all kinds of delicious food pics.

Loaded mac 'n' cheese. Pork tacos. Loaded mac 'n' cheese inside a pork taco. Homemade caramels. Red velvet cookies with icing for dunking. Fruity Pebble treats with neon blue frosting. Sugar cookies with a three-eyed rainbow teddy bear emoji dancing on top of them...

Wait... is this some sort of stoner operation?

Yes, yes it is.

For the past two years, Rodrick Williams of Bald Head Bakery has not only been serving up stuff to get you high, he’s also been cooking up the kind of stuff you want to eat while high (and when you’re 100% sober, too). 

It all started with a speeding ticket back home in Lewisville, Texas. Williams got into baking—the non-THC variety, it should be noted—during high school after getting pulled over for driving way too fast. His parents laughed, and told him he was going to have to pay the fine himself. Inspiration came to him while walking through the bakery section of a grocery store: He would make that money via a one-man bake sale.

“Literally that week I started selling cookies and brownies in my high school in the hallways,” he says. “About two weeks later we were taking orders from teachers.”

Williams took a break from baking at the University of Minnesota, mainly because he was busy being a running back for Jerry Kill's Golden Gophers football teams. After graduation he got back into baking, baking, and making munchies, which he he would make in his kitchen and sell at special events. But he knew he needed to take it to the next level, and that meant taking a trip to Iowa.

“Back in April of last year I was still working a regular job,” says Williams, who ran for 815 yards throughout his four seasons with the Gophs. “I found a trailer pop-up I wanted to convert for like $200 in Iowa. So I rented a jeep from Turo, drove down to Iowa, and in probably a month I had converted it enough to pull up to local breweries.”

Since then he’s been popping up at places like 56 Brewing, Broken Clock Brewing, Insight Brewing, and, most recently, Art-A-Whirl and the Lakeview Terrace Farmers’ Market. What he’s serving up depends on the location, though it all makes sense under the broad Bald Head umbrella.

“I’m primarily an edible baker, but when we go to breweries I do tacos, loaded mac and cheese,” Williams says. “A lot of the regular food that we make now are considered our munchie items.”

As for the mac 'n' cheese tacos? Those were a special request from munchie-craving girlfriend.

“The food that I make [for the public] is usually food I made for my girlfriend,” he says. “Once the mac cheese started melting with the cheese that was already in the taco; I just kinda knew. I was like, ‘Dang this is a good one. This is it.’”

Williams aims to make Bald Head Bakery a place where you can get good eats at non-Twin Cities prices.

“I’m from Texas, and I sometimes complain that there’s not good food here,” he says. “And yes, I know there’s good food here, but it’s really difficult to find it at an affordable price. In Texas, I can get a burger and fries and a soda, and that would cost me $8—and it would probably taste better than a lot of the burgers here. So I wanted to provide something simple that was still good. We keep it all in-house and we keep it simple.” 

Now at the two-year mark, Bald Head is going through the regular growing pains of a business in a booming cottage industry. That means saving up to buy bigger coolers, bigger storage units, and getting access to a bigger kitchen.

“I literally went from working from home to making trips to Restaurant Depot every other day,” Williams says. “And my oven simply cannot bake that much stuff. I’m hoping to rent out a church kitchen two to three times a week.”

As for where to find him this summer, Williams often posts his schedule via the Bald Head Bakery Instagram. Upcoming trailer trips include the Lakeview Terrace Farmers’ Market this Saturday (May 27) and MN Co-Op Get Together at Joe’s Shrimp Shack (June 3). (Which, amazingly, is actually a shop for live exotic aquarium shrimp; no po’ boys here!)  

You can also DM him on Insta to order his latest tasty edibles, whether you’re looking for a bday cake or some homemade caramels. “We’re just trying to showcase cannabis in a culinary way here,” Williams says.