Felicia, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you think folks should manage their own social media or hire a professional? What do you do?
Currently I manage all our social media accounts. I feel being able to manage the accounts helps us remain authentic and relatable to our audience. Even though there are a lot of resources available now to help with content creation, it can still feel like a full-time job sometimes especially with the algorithms changing. I know as we continue to grow I will eventually have to delegate the task to someone else but for now it is a learning process and I just try and make sure to post, connect with our people and share some behind the scene footage.
Felicia, 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?
I’m a lady of many hats. My roles consists of being a wife, mother of two young athletes, an entrepreneur, a friend and I also serve on our local Mainstreet Macon Board and Events Committee. These things definitely keep me busy and I’ve learned I have to prioritize and plan ahead in order to get things done. My journey into baking/decorating began a few years after graduating college as a Registered Respiratory Therapist. Sometimes working 12 hours shifts three to five days a week would be stressful and I needed a way to destress, so I turned to decorating cakes. Don’t get me wrong I love respiratory and helping people to breathe but now I’m enjoying helping to make people’s “sweet” dreams come true. Who knew I would be where I am today and that it all started when I began making cakes for my children.
After being asked to make cakes for several people I decided I could make some extra money from this. So I researched how to start a business in my area. I applied for the appropriate licenses through the state and city and was granted approval to operate as a cottage style bakery. My plans were to just continue doing this on the side while working as a respiratory therapist but one day I rode past a building that was vacant and it stood out to me. I contacted the property manager and told her my plans and they were excited. We negotiated the contract and once I was pleased with the terms I signed it.
In September of 2017, we opened our first brick and mortar location and have been offering sweets to the community ever since. Although we specialize in custom wedding and birthday cakes we also offer a variety of other desserts such as cupcakes, cake slices, cake pops, cheesecakes and cookies. We are very passionate about delivering delicious home baked goods and never compromise on the taste nor looks. For this reason our clients can order from us with complete peace of mind that their cakes/desserts will not only look exquisite but will taste truly scrumptious too.
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
The most effective strategy for growing our clientele would be providing them with excellent customer service and delicious products.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
We had been in business for a couple of years and had figured out just about what we needed to provide our customers. We even started offering decorating classes and baking camp for kids. Then March 2020 came and COVID-19 began shutting just about everything down. We were limited on what we could order from our suppliers and had no idea what was going to happen next. Being new to this business thing I was terrified and decided to shut down for two weeks to regroup and figure out our next move. After processing what was happening I found some organizations who were instrumental in making sure we remained open. They offered free webinars, larger organizations even came together to offer grants to smaller businesses and the community still wanted our sweets.
So we ramped up our Ecommerce game and offered a way for our customers to still get our products. They could now go online and purchase items and select to pickup via curbside service or have no-contact deliveries. I wasn’t sure how it would go but knew I needed to do something and to my surprise our community definitely showed out and supported us and for that we are grateful and love them.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://feliciacakefactory.com
- Instagram: @feliciacakefactory
- Facebook: @feliciacakefactory