A Cake is Born-Part 2

I'm an avid listener of podcasts on my way to and from work. There are so many amazing stories being told and business ideas being shared and it always serves as a great motivator to get me in the right mindset to approach the day at the bakery. One of my favorites is How I Built This with Guy Raz. Each episode features an interview with an entrepreneur and details the journey they took to get themselves as well as their business to the point where it is today. To me, it seems as if each of these interviews features a defining moment where the entrepreneur realizes that their passion has real potential to become a business. For Caroline's Cakes, this moment arrived when Caroline received a phone call from US Trust requesting an order for 2000 Caramel cakes.

At the time all of our cakes were being made in my parents home kitchen, which had an output of approximately 8 whole cakes per day. You can imagine how daunting it was for an order for 2000 cakes to come in, but Caroline accepted the order without hesitation and with great enthusiasm. She just knew. Despite the daunting task in front of her, Caroline knew how important it was to maintain the time-honored processes and recipes that people had made in their own kitchens for years. The Caramel icing had to be made just right, there were no cutting corners!

Once that order came in, Mom just knew she had something special. In addition to increasing the efficiency of production, Caroline also realized that the US Trust order was a great opportunity to start shipping cakes! Countless hours were spent baking in the basement and packaging cakes for shipment in the garage for that first order and 2000 cakes later, Caroline's Cakes was born!

Richard R. Reutter