Vicky Bakery opens first Keys location, adds Bar Victor in Key Largo

Key Largo’s former Denny’s at mile marker 97.6 has a new tenant with a broader pitch than pastries alone: Vicky Bakery opened the company’s first Florida Keys location and, with it, debuted Bar Victor, the chain’s first full-service bar.

The move gives Monroe County a new combination of bakery, café and nighttime gathering spot in one of the Upper Keys’ busiest commercial corridors. Set in the median along U.S. 1, the site is built to catch residents heading home, commuters passing through and visitors looking for a stop that feels more local than a highway chain.

The opening marked the company’s 30th Florida location, a milestone for a family-owned Cuban bakery that began in Hialeah in 1972. Antonio and Gelasia Cao started the business after meeting while working at La Vencedora in Cuba, then came to Miami as political exiles before turning a small shop into a statewide chain. Naming the bar Bar Victor, after founder Antonio Victor Cao, adds a personal stamp that separates this Key Largo outpost from a standard bakery expansion.

That matters in the Upper Keys, where new businesses have to work harder for every customer and every dollar. A bakery-bar hybrid at mile marker 97.6 suggests confidence not just in breakfast and lunch traffic, but in the broader after-hours economy as well. It adds a place where locals can linger later in the day, and where travelers heading north or south can stop for a meal, a pastry or a drink without leaving the highway corridor.

Chamber of Commerce representatives joined family and friends at the celebration, underscoring how closely watched commercial openings can be in a market like Key Largo. For a county that often measures economic health in whether businesses stay open, expand or reinvest, Vicky Bakery’s arrival is more than a ribbon cutting. It is a sign that a family operation rooted in Cuban-American food culture sees enough promise in the Upper Keys to build something new there, and to make it different from the usual bakery counter in the process.