We recently connected with Samantha Bates and have shared our conversation below.

Samantha, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry?

I’m a baker and a cake artist. I spent almost 7 years in a retail bakery setting. The corporate retail bakery world is completely different then when you’re your own business. Corporate retail bakeries like groccery stores expect you to bake and/or decorate so many cakes in a shift. But they don’t train employees properly, because they don’t want to invest the time/money into them. In return they get sloppy quality. They also use cheaper ingredients to cut costs. I think if they were to train employees longer and really teach them, and use quailty ingredients they could charge more getting the cost back, while offering a better product. Another issuse is pay. So many cake decorators/bakers usually leave the retail world due to pay. You can make so much more working for yourself.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Samantha but I go by Sam and I’m the artist behind ‘Sam’s Custom Cakes’. I’ve been decorating Cakes professionally for 12 years now. I started off in a retail bakery, then decided to start my own business. I’ve been in business for almost 5 years. I make cakes, cupcakes, cake pops, chocolate dipped treats, and macarons. I also compete in the occasional cake contests. I’ve won multiple awards for my cake showpieces. I’ve done Cakes for all occasions, and have met so many amazing people. I love whimsical and artist Cakes, but the best part of my job is seeing how happy my cakes make my customers. Especially the little kids when they get the exact birthday cake they wanted. I’ve also done multiple cakes to the charity ‘Icing Smiles’, which is such a wonderful organization. I honestly LOVE my job, I get to be creative and make people happy. It’s litterly the best job ever!

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

I bought things little by little, until i had enough supplies and tools to start my business.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I started a Facebook business page, and would advertise on local yard sale pages, and Facebook marketplace. All free ways to get advertising. Then to up my followers I do giveaways that require people to engage on my page, by sharing, commenting, and tagging friends. Word of mouth is also great especially in the local mom groups.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @cakeartist97
• Facebook: Facebook.com/cakeartist97
• Other: Tiktok @cakeartist97