We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Alexa Bontrager. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Alexa below.

Alexa, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear your thoughts about family businesses.

I love the idea of a family business. I recently got married and my husband helps me do all my deliveries on the weekends. He is very tech savvy so also helped me revamp my invoicing system which made it so much more efficient. It sounds so fun to have our kids be a part of the business (whenever that time comes) too!

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

My name is Alexa and I bake and decorate cake and cupcakes. My love for baking started with making brownies for my dad when I was a little girl, and it only grew from there.
I like to say my cakes and cupcakes look AND taste good, a very important combination. Weddings are my main form of business, but I bake for all occasions – showers, birthdays, just because :) I frost everything with cream cheese frosting because that’s what my mom frosted all of our cakes with growing up and I might be biased, but I think it’s the best kind of frosting.
One of the reasons I love baking is because it brings people together. I love baking and I love people, so it’s the perfect combination really :) Being able to add a little joy to someone’s day with something as simple as a cupcake is honestly my favorite thing about it all :)

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

I have always loved baking – whenever my friends came to my house in high school we would almost always end up in the kitchen waiting for fresh cookies or cupcakes to come out of the oven. About 6 years ago now, one of my high school friends asked me to bake cupcakes for her wedding and I obviously said yes. It was then I realized my love for baking could be more than just a hobby. I made an Instagram and started posting some of my baked goods to my following – consisting of mostly close friends and family. People placed orders and I slowly built up my reputation. I had a full time job in admin at the time so I just did this on the side. I was so much more passionate about baking than I was at my day job, so I made the scary jump to quit and work at a bakery – just to make sure I loved it enough to do it every day. I learned SO much at the bakery and after about 3 months, was ready to venture on my own.

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

My business is built on social media. Instagram and Facebook are my main source of clients. It makes me really thankful for social media! Word of mouth definitely plays a role too,

Contact Info:

• Website: thecakegirl.co
• Instagram: _thecakegirl
• Facebook: The Cake Girl Grandville