We were lucky to catch up with Catreace Woods & Yolanda Lopez recently and have shared our conversation below.
SOCA Cake Design, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Almost all entrepreneurs have had to decide whether to start now or later? There are always pros and cons for waiting and so we’d love to hear what you think about your decision in retrospect. If you could go back in time, would you have started your business sooner, later or at the exact time you started?
If we could go back we would have started our business sooner however at the same time, we feel like things happen when they’re supposed to. We started SOCA Cake Design last year but we have always had the dream to do so early on in our culinary careers. It was when we became friends that we both realized that we had the same dream! You could almost say that God threw us into each other’s paths to give one another the push to step out and just go for it! We had both been chefs who loved creating and cooking for more than two decades before we stepped out and took the risk…we try not to concentrate on regret and believe this was our time to just go for it.
SOCA Cake Design, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
We’re both professional chefs who became best friends. We have both been in the culinary industry for a combined 46 years…22 years for me & 24 years for Yolanda. We were both creatives who expressed our art through food and cooking for those we loved at very young ages…it just simply followed a normal path and we both ended up doing it as careers. We love using our years of creativity in fine dining establishments coupled with pastry arts to provide our clients with something that’s a bit different than the usual. We still love a good warm chocolate chip cookie but we like to put a spin on things. The most important thing to us is to give the client not only what they asked for but to go above that! We specialize in tall cakes, a large array of fine petit upscale pastries and even the simple chewie…but with a twist! We do all upscale all occasion cakes as well. This is not just a business for us, it’s giving someone a memory ❤️
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
There are many times where we have wanted to just go back to being chefs in the industry. We keep pushing because we feel like this is where we’re supposed to be right now. As our motto goes, we do all things for His glory…pushing past hard times when business gets difficult is no exception.
What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?
Social media as well as the old fashioned way…word of mouth! A lot of our new clients come from events, parties, weddings, ect that we have done for our previous clients and it has just built from there….and we want to give a huge thank you to those clients!
Contact Info:
- Instagram: SOCA Cake Design & Pastry
- Facebook: SOCA Cake Design & Pastry