Today we’d like to introduce you to Lisa Porada

Hi Lisa, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.

I am a lifelong resident of New Jersey, a jersey girl. I graduated
from Rutgers University with degrees in Political Science and Spanish and from
Drew University with a Master’s Degree in International Affairs. After graduating,
I worked on Wall Street for an international financial institution for several years before moving to a financial/pharmaceutical consulting firm in NJ where I continued my career for another 10 years.

I have always been a creative person and used my creativity thoughout my corporate career and personal life in a many ways. Eventually my love of creating sweets, originating from a high school job in a sweet shop, inspired me to
leave the corporate world and pursue my dream of becoming a business owner. I founded Chocolate Carousel after completing training in chocolate, pastry arts and cake design. My business began as a small sweet shop with ice cream, candy novelties and baked desserts. Over the past 22 years we have grown into a gourmet dessert shop specializing in custom cakes, custom favors, novelty chocolate, pastry and desserts. We partner with some of the best venues, country clubs and caterers in the state and have become a leader in the wedding cake industry. In addition to operating the business, I serve as the executive pastry chef and lead cake designer. Currently I oversees a team of more than 25 full time employees and maintain relationships with over 50 business partners.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?

Nothing worthwhile is ever easy. This certainly applies to entrepreneurship. Our road was rocky and uphill at times. The story of my journey was long but my all in approach didn’t allow for failure. The first 12-14 years were very challenging. I worked 7 days a week and rarely had any time off working at times 16 hour days. I look back at those times and wonder how I kept up the pace but I loved the work, I had an unwavering desire to succeed and simply needed to survive. Failure was never an option for me. I often tell young entrepreneurs that perseverance is the most important quality for success.

I never stopped believing in my product, my misson and my work. About 6 years into the journey we doubled our size moving just next door to a bigger space and in year 13 we hit our stride. Finally starting to see my dream taking form inspired me to continue to grow the business and we expanded once again adding on a new space that became our custom favor studio. The support of the neighborhoods surrounding our shop, the couples coming from all over the state and beyone to work with us for their wedding cakes and the hard working team at Chocolate Carousel all contributed to our success and we experienced a “smooth road” period to a few years.

However, as often happens in life and business, roadblocks appear when you least expect it and COVID hit in 2020. Overnight events were cancelled and we found ourselves with cancelled weddings, parties and events crashing down. I made the most difficult decision of career and layed off my entire staff and closed the doors of the shop with tears streaming down my face. I wanted to push pause and figure out our next move. Within a few weeks we began to bring staff back and with the help of my family I decided to fight for what I built. My daughters worked hard on my social media and set us up with online ordering, we offered curbside pick up and stared a 1,2,3 process for ordering small wedding cakes for intimate backyard events. Again, failure was not an option and slowly we pivoted and navigated our way through our new normal. It took more than two years for my business to fully recover but today I am proud of how we perservered, moved forward, embraced the changes and came out on the other side stronger than ever before.

Today we are enjoying a smooth road once again. Our wedding business is back and thriving, our favor studio is bursting with orders for custom cookie favors and chocolate favors for every kind of event, our retail showroom is filled with the most delicious dessert creations and our team of bakers, pastry chefs, cake designers, artists and administrators are bustling around every day creating the delicious works of art that put smiles on our customers’ faces each and every day.

As a way of giving back to our community and thanking them for their support we have added events to our offerings that include cake decorating workshops, baking classes and ladie’s nights and our fan favorite Cake Slice Saturday. Held on the third Saturday of every month, Cake Slice Saturday is an open house between 11 am and 2 pm that welcomes local and out-of-state visitors—out-of-towners traveling from as far as New York and Boston and Vermont. This is such a fun day for our staff and customers to enjoy creative cake flavors served by the “flight” and socializing with each other, its literally a party every month”

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?

My business Chocolate Carousel is a gourmet dessert shoppe located in New Jersey near the beach. All our our desserts are deliciously made in small batches using the finest and freshest ingredients available. However Chocolate Carousel has become known for our custom cakes which are fresh, flavorful and delicious as well as artistically decorated using a variety of techniques. Our team of cake designers are on hand to lend their creativity to each design and every cake creation is uniquely customized.

When I think about how far we have come over the years I am extremely proud, proud that I took an idea and worked hard to see it through, proud that my family has supported my journey working right alongside me through all the ups and downs, proud that I have fulfilled my dream of giving creative and talented individuals a place to enjoy a career not just a job and proud of the way the community and our customers have embraced what we do and allowed us to be a part of their celebrations for so many years.

We are set apart from other bake shops by both our creative concepts and our commitment to exceptional customer engagement and service.

Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?

Covid 19 taught me the importance of being able to pivot. It is easy to get comfortable with the status quo and change is never easy however I have learned that being bold and reversing direction can be extremely rewarding and take you to placed you may not even have imagined.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://chocolatecarousel.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chocolatecarousel/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChocolateCarouselDessertShoppe