Update from Addicakes: On to the journey

Now on to the journey. When I last posted I told you how I came into the baking world and our experience when selling my products to make extra money for bills and Christmas. Once we were contacted from the Health Dept. and the Chamber of Commerce we know we must be on to something, not only did we create enough of a buzz for the Chamber to contact us but also for someone to feel threatened and call the Health Dept. to have us shut down. We indeed became members of the Chamber of Commerce, as well spoke to the Health Dept. and explained our situation to them. The Health Dept. was very understanding, but put us on our mission to find a commercial building to place our business. We spent over a year looking at building all over town to only find building that were run down or to expensive to purchase or remodel for our needs. We came across a wonderful lady who owned a local deli that allowed us to become licensed through her location and sell our cupcakes from her business. We also were able to place our items in another location in the coming months which allowed us to see what kind of business we could do before we jumped into our own building.

One year later in 2011 we stumbled across a small building that housed a chicken business that had closed, the kitchen was there and the price to rent was right, we signed the lease and moved in. Three months later, February of 2011 we opened for business and were grateful enough to be featured on the front page of the local paper which brought in  hoards of people. The amount of people coming in the door was more then we ever expected and were certainly unprepared for, many days we sold out and had to close early. For the first 3 weeks we seen unprecedented sales, booked full of orders for the next 6 months and contracted 12 weddings. I seen very little sleep as I spent almost 24/7 baking and decorating trying to keep up with the demand we were seeing.

With a lack of staff and taking on family and friends with little to no experience to help out so I could get some sleep, the problems began. From burnt, dry cupcakes to wrong orders we quickly spiraled out of control with issues, and the bad reviews spread like wildfire. After receiving complaint after complaint I did all I could to make as many changes as I could to correct the issues, at which point I also hired an apprentice baker and bakers assistant to help me keep up with what demand we still had and start the repairing of our name before we went out of business from the bad reviews.

After hiring the apprentice and assistant, I was called back to my full time job, being trained in our new recipes and having a good control over things I returned to work in April of 2012. Things started back on the right track, but the business still was nowhere it was when we first opened, we made many changes and tested recipes as much as possible to correct issues as we came across them, until July. In July my baker decided to take a new job and the assistant left for college, leaving me with no employees and working full time I had no time to train new, this forced us to close our retail store and focus on just completing the orders and try to reopen our store. In November I was laid off from my job again, my focus turned to reopening my bakery and focusing on finding funding to do so.

As I searched the web I came across several contests, grants and financial opportunities to help with the reopening of the storefront. This is when I came across the Idea Cafe Small Business Grant, as well as The American Family Insurance Dream Camp Contest. I entered both and hoped to be selected as a semi finalist.

Promotion, promotion, promotion, through our website and Facebook, I worked my hardest to rebuild our name, and ensure people we did not go out of business, we were still there and we were reopening. February of 2013 we finally reopened the store, and it was deju vue all over again, just me, not much help, only difference was we didn't have the customers, the newspaper had no interest in doing a story and we found ourselves on our own, only gaining promotion from our faithful fans who stood beside us and returned when we reopened.

Then they selected the semi finalists.....