Mackenzie Rubish: Where Are They Now?

Spoiler note: this post confirms that Mackenzie Rubish won her season of The Great American Baking Show.

Mackenzie Rubish won the 2024 season of The Great American Baking Show, the seventh overall and the second of the Roku Channel era, judged by Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith. A Southern California baker who was reportedly one of just eight chosen from more than 20,000 applicants, she has spent the time since doing the most methodical bakery launch of any recent champion. Here is where things stand.

The season 7 win

Rubish, an Oceanside native living in Fallbrook in northern San Diego County, took the title in the season released in May 2024. Her local press run was extensive: coverage from Valley News, The Coast News, CBS 8, and even her old high school's foundation, which claimed her win with alumni pride. She is the seventh name in the full list of Great American Baking Show winners.

Umu Bakehouse, built the analyst's way

Here is the detail that makes Rubish's story distinctive: her day job is quality analyst, and she has been openly running her bakery ambitions like an analyst would. San Diego Magazine and local business press covered her plan to open Umu Bakehouse inside a shared commercial kitchen space in Vista, using it as a base for catering, special orders, pop-ups, and workshops while she gathers the data (her word choice, not ours) to justify a brick-and-mortar bakery someday. The planned menu runs to stuffed cookies, cakes, cupcakes, tartlets, and dessert cups.

She has also moved into teaching, with local TV covering her launch of baking classes. Between the win, the pop-ups, and the classes, she is executing the standard modern champion playbook, just with more spreadsheets than most.

Where things stand now

As of this writing, Umu Bakehouse remains in its shared-kitchen, pop-up-and-catering phase, with the standalone storefront still the stated goal rather than a fact; we found no public announcement of a brick-and-mortar opening yet. Rubish has framed that patience as deliberate, and given the failure rate of new bakeries, the analyst approach looks wise.

The takeaway for fans

Season 7 gave the Roku era its second champion and its most business-minded one. If you are in San Diego County, her pop-ups and classes are the way to taste a champion's work in progress; everyone else can watch the season and root for the storefront to happen.