We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Bianca Brooks a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Bianca, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

In 2014, I was terminated from my job, that I worked for a combined 7 years a total of two times in two locations. I was a single mother with two children and I had bills and daily needs that I had to find a way to pay. I was still in school online, and I was looking for jobs when I had the idea to start my own business from home…. but what could I sell. I talked to my grandma Jean and she suggested I come over and try to learn to bake a few things to sell. She had been baking, catering events and selling dinners since I was a little girl and I never thought that I would be following in her footsteps. I went to her house one weekend my kids were away and we started working on my first cake….. a strawberry cake with cream cheese frosting from scratch. She gave me this tattered piece of newspaper that she had torn out of the paper years ago with a recipe for a strawberry cake. We sifted the flour and other ingredients, while she showed me how to start mixing them together in her Kitchenaid stand mixer I always wanted to use! We made two layer cakes and while they baked, we started on the cream cheese frosting from scratch. While we waited for the cakes to cool, my grandma showed me other recipes that I should try that other people may want to buy. I frosted the cake and sliced some fresh strawberries to add on top, it actually was really cute for my first layer cake. I posted the picture to my Facebook page and within minutes I had a comment asking how much was the cake and they wanted it right then! I was so scared-happy-anxious at the same time. I hadn’t even thought of a price yet, or even a name of my business. I was working as a Senior Administrative Assistant for a consulting firm and I was only dreaming of my business in between presentations or proposals I was working on… never really thinking that I would be able to really do it. And here I was with a real order…. yes it was from a family member, but it was a real request for something that I baked…. with help.

This made me dive into my new talent and create a business name, I still am unsure how I came up with but it always gets so many compliments. BiancakeVA is pronounced Beyond Cake VA (Virginia). I am born and raised in Norfolk, Virginia in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. I was able to incorporate my name (Bianca) and hometown, and the idea of my business all in one name.

I found a young black female illustrator her business name is Whimsical Designs by CJ, LLC. Her instagram is @whimsicaldesigns_bycj that created my likeness for me in cartoon form and created my logo for me. I immediately ordered shirts from VistaPrint and business cards and started posting all day when I could to my Facebook friends. I was getting orders on the weekend and was fulfilling them after I would get my kids to sleep and then deliver in the day time with the kids helping me with deliveries. The life that I created for my children and I from BiancakeVA was something I will always be thankful for. I started selling dinners along with my baked goods and with tips I would cook extra meals and take them to unhoused people in my community. I would find families on Craigslist that were in need or living in hotels and bring them free dinners with bags for the kids with coloring books and crayons to pass the time. I had big dreams of helping the unhoused and I reached out to a lot of people to help but I was never able to get donations to get a building and really help people like I wanted to.

I have been blessed to have my banana pudding appear in a local restaurant, that allowed me to reach a larger customer base. I started selling my baked products and banana pudding outside of the restaurant at a small table and sold out several times. I had a great day the weekend of Valentine’s Day and featured cheesecake bombs to the menu, and they were a hit. It really showed me that I had something real with my business, and listening to people try samples and tell me how good everything was it really enhanced my passion to go bigger. Unfortunately the restaurant closed and I relocated to Florida, creating a new customer base and forcing me to include shipping services for my regular customers back home.

Since being in Florida, I have found new customers and more events and places that I can sell which is so exciting to me. I also found out since I moved to Florida, my youngest son has autism so I formed a nonprofit, Hashim’s Village Inc. to help him and others get the support they need in life. I want to help other families get the support they need and show them other skills to enhance their daily lives with gardening, farming, baking, homesteading, and all activities to sustain themselves.

The goal for 2024 is to merge the two and help others while still sharing our gifts of sweets to others. I started a neighborhood association in my community and took a cake to our first meeting and it was a hit. I sent the rest to the local police station to get my name around town. I am also on a County Board which also gives me access to people from cities all around me and a larger network of people that I can reach with my business. Here in Florida, I can bake from home with a cottage license with no issue from the state which has helped me progress a lot more than when I was in Virginia. They had a lot of home baking laws that made it illegal to bake from home. I was sent a warning letter prior to me moving that threatened court costs, fines and jail time if I did not stop baking and selling products from my home.

I feel that I was moved to Florida for a reason and I am now growing my own fruits, vegetables and herbs and baking and selling plants from my home. I am applying for grants to get 501c3 designation for my nonprofit so we will be able to accept donations and hopefully get land to start our village farm. I want to bake and cook with the produce that we grow, and share them with community at daily family dinners. I know that one day soon I will be able to bake and help people at the same time, one day at a time!

Bianca, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I started baking and helping people because that is how I was raised and what I am used to being around. My grandmother worked at a nonprofit organization and taught us how to make food boxes for families and always explained to us to be grateful and blessed with what we had. She was always cooking for people or someone was coming over to get food or eat. I always knew that we had a lot of cooks in our family but it wasn’t something that I really thought I would make a business out of until I started getting orders. it really made me see that I had something that people wanted to pay for, and that made me want to see what other bakers were doing in the industry to get better. I have an advanced art background from high school, I’ve had several of my pieces in local museums in exhibits. I also graduated from the local vocational school with a 2-year degree in fashion design, so my artistic talents have always been something that I loved to share with others. I’ve been working on my graduate degree in Public Administration since 2021 in all this madness I forgot to add the most important! I go to capella university and I’m in honors surprisingly I’m 50% done. I should start working on my dissertation later this year praying to god!

BiancakeVA has been established since 2014 in my kitchen in Hampton, Virginia and now is a 10-year business located in Florida. I have opportunities lined up to appear at events in the upcoming months to get more customers aware of me and what I have to offer. I have my Notary Public certification in Florida which means I can marry people, so I also advertise dually as a marriage officiant and wedding bakers/planner. I want to be a multi-faceted business of talent and tastes that are unique to me. I feel like we all have a talent that someone will pay for, we just have to tune into what that talent is and sharpen our skills accordingly.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Resilience is having to relocate your business to a new state and not knowing if anyone there will even care about your business. I had to relocate for family reasons so it had to be done. I had to create a way to break it to my customers, while still get income to move in the meantime. I created a online store and sold stockpile items that I had from couponing, which allowed me to reach new customers that would buy baked goods at the same time. You have to be creative when thinking of a marketing plan, instead of giving up you have to really look at what you have to offer and who your target audience is. Your business will not be for everyone, especially family, you want to find strangers that you will turn into lifelong customers. I had a going away sale with my real customers and then created a way that I could ship to them without having to pay as much initially. For some this was not a good thing, and it did hurt my business initially which caused me to lower prices and in turn I was paying for the shipping costs and getting no profits. I had to make my price and stick to it and eventually I found new people on Facebook Marketplace that were more than happy to pay $10 more than I quoted. This made me see that I needed to see my own worth and not adjust my prices to someone’s request. A person will buy what they want and it is proven every day when we look at some of the expensive things that people buy nowadays. Don’t worry about those that won’t pay, there will be one that will and make you feel so good at the same time.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

The best source of new clients for me being in a new place is Facebook Marketplace, Facebook groups, local community groups that I am in/or have attended, and taking my son to the local park and meeting neighbors. You have to be creative when thinking about marketing nowadays, you have to think that everyone has a phone, but some people do not. If your product is something you can advertise offline always have it with you if possible, I try to wear my company’s tshirt if possible when I am out running errands.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @bianca7022