We were lucky to catch up with Shadayah Perry recently and have shared our conversation below.

Shadayah, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love for you to start by sharing your thoughts about the pros and cons of family businesses.

Ever since I was a little girl, I enjoyed watching my parents in the kitchen. Most of the time, I do not think they even knew that I was watching. Watching my dad in the kitchen sparked my curiosity for food. Now that I am a mother of two small boys, I have learned that spending time with them can be done through food. Right now, they are much too young to be helping with the business, but they are curious. The school that I also work at did something special with the students where all of the faculty and staff went around to each classroom and shared something special about themselves to help the students find someone they had a connection with. I chose to share that I am a small business owner and made all 450 students a cookie ( chocolate chip). It was really funny because when me and my child went home he said to be “mom, I didn’t now that you owned a bakery, will you take me there one day.” I told him that I actually do it out of our own kitchen. (To this day, I am not sure what he thought I was doing when I was making hundreds of cookies and cakes). He then asked if we could go home and make cookies together and for sure we did!

I love that I am able to share this business with my family. Right now my husband helps with the finances and my children more observe, but it is sparking their own little interest. Working with my husband has been a great blessing because we are able to look at the progress the business is making and know that we are doing it together. We are learning and adapting as a team to create a successful business.

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

When I was a little girl, I spent most of my leisure time watching The Food Network. This is where I learned to love to cook. During this time, I wanted to make cooking as a career. I wanted to go to culinary school and study in Europe–mainly Rome and Italy. Unfortunately, growing up in the small town of Clawson, Utah, I felt as if this was not plausible. So I decided to go into teaching and my “cooking” dream never made it past my own kitchen.

Fast-forward to 2020, my mom calls me one day and asks if I would order her a cake decorating kit off of Amazon. She stated that she wanted to learn and practice decorating cakes. So when I ordered her one, I ordered me one. We planned a Saturday where we would get together and we would each decorate a cake. I have always been told that people eat with their eyes and fortunately for me, the cake tasted great! Looks….not so much.

My first frosted cake didn’t look the greatest, but I enjoyed doing it. I decided that I would keep practicing. I started decorating a cake a week. My skills started getting better and my weaknesses were getting smaller and smaller. Unfortunately my waistline was doing the oppopposite! I started branching out on my baking endeavors and brushing up on my skills, and started giving my products to close friends and family.

I feel like this is important to put in as well. When I had my first child in 2017, I developed the “baby blues”. Unfortunately for me, my “blues” developed into a postpartum depression to a severe level. One in 10 women have this same struggle. I struggled emotionally for months before finally seeking treatment. When I was teaching, I was busy and happy, but our schools are out for 3 months during the summer. That first summer I had with my child was a struggle every day. My husband worked graveyard as a Corrections Officer to help provide for our new family. I was only seeing him a few hours out of the days that he worked and when he was not working, he was sleeping and keeping his sleep patterns in check. I felt like I was a married single mother. Being alone this much with a colic baby was emotionally draining and tasking on my mental health, but once I returned to teaching, I was fine. Summers were still hard though.

When I got pregnant with my second child, postpartum hit again and in full force. It was much worse than my first. My second child was born on March 12, 2020. The Nation was put into COVID Quarantine on March 13, 2020. I felt so isolated. With my husband’s job, he considered an “Essential worker” and needed to still go to work which we were very grateful for. With the quarantine, I could not have family come and help me make the transition from one child to two. Two weeks, I just needed to make it two weeks. Well, two weeks turned into three. Three weeks turned into four. I was getting to the end of my maternity leave and very much struggling. The thing that kept me going was knowing that I would be going back to teaching, even if it would be remotely. My glimmer of hope and sanity. Then I received an email stating that the Utah school year will be cut short and students would not be returning to the schools. Their last day was going to be week 7 of my 8-week maternity leave. I would not be returning to teaching for the school year of 2020. It was like the perfect storm. A hurricane of emotional roller coasters. Somehow I made it through the summer of 2020, but I struggled each and every day. The 2020-2021 school year started and we were fortunate enough to be going to school in person with masks. This was what I needed for my emotional well-being. Like I stated before if I am busy and occupied, my mental wellness was managed. It was in September 2020 that my mom made that phone call for a cake kit.

In January of 2021, I decided that I wanted to start my own bakery business. I decided that I wanted to open up an in home bakery called Sweets N Treats by Shadayah. I planned and prepared for months to get everything in place and finalized. During this time, I was teaching full time and raising my two young boys (both under the age of 4).

In March of 2021, everything was finalized and I was officially a business owner. I didn’t realize then what a huge blessing this business would play in mine and my family’s lives. This business has given me more opportunities to get to know people and develop relationships. It has also given me the talent to take raw ingredients and make something beautiful. When I was growing up, a cake was just a cake, but to some people, a cake is everything.

I have had the opportunity to provide cakes to small children on their birthdays and see the light in their eyes brighten because they received a custom cake. (If you have never seen a child realize their name is on their cake, you are missing out). I have provided cakes to make brides and grooms on the happiest day of their lives. I have even provided cupcakes to a sweet angel in Heaven who passed away as a toddler on her “angelversary”. With this bakery, I have developed friendships and it is something I am very grateful for. It has provided me with opportunities and a way to keep my mind and body busy during the summer months, which always brought much anxiety to me and my family. This bakery honestly saved my life.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

Went it comes to running a bakery, you need to be very organized! There are many customers each month that have custom orders and each one is different. Each order has different designs, flavors, special requests, fulfillment dates etc. They all need to be kept straight or it could be very bad! Fortunately for me, I have not mixed up an order, but I have indeed (almost) forgot an order.

It was during my first year of owning my business and a client contacted me for a birthday cake for her niece. We planned the details all the way down to the fulfillment date. Fast forward about 2 weeks, I am on my way out of town to go fishing with my husband’s family and I get a message via Facebook from this client asking when she could pick up the cake. CAKE! WHAT CAKE!

Somehow during my input of the date, I had put the 25 and not the 15th. I of course panicked! I called the client and told her my mistake and luckily for me, her party was not until later that afternoon. I rushed home (we had to cancel our fishing trip, but we did reschedule for the next weekend), and I made, baked, and decorated a cake in about 4 hours. (If you are a baker, you know that is nothing shore of a miracle).

When the client picked up she was so kind and understanding, which is very important to remember that everyone makes mistakes, and at the end of the day, I hope there was a little girl who loved her unicorn birthday cake.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One lesson that I had to unlearn in a bakery was that everyone has different ideas of what colors are. When it comes to wedding cakes and color pallets for weddings, it is important to match the best that you can. I had one client contact me for a wedding cake. It was a beautiful design and she wanted a two tier white cake with a Ombre’ fade of royal blue from the bottom. Well, her idea and my idea for royal blue were VERY different. When the bride came to pick up the cake, she brought some florals to place of the cake. They did not match my colors at all! Do not get me wrong, the cake was still beautiful, but I could tell that this poor bride was a little disappointed. I felt horrible! That was the day that I learned to get a color sample for any orders that are asking for you to color match! I also have my clients sign and approve a contract and order form to ensure that we are all on the same page! It is a lot of prep and communication with clients, but it allows no miscommunication. At the end of the day, my goal is to create a product that the client will be happy with.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @sweetsntreats_byshadayah
• Facebook: facebook.com/sweetsntreatsbyshadayah
• Email: sweetsntreatsbyshadayah@gmail.com
• Tik Tok: Sweetsntreats_byshadayah