Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Heather Leavitt. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Heather, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about your team building process? How did you recruit and train your team and knowing what you know now would you have done anything differently?

When I first started the business, I had a lot of interest from friends and acquaintances to help out and learn to decorate cakes. A great group of the volunteers transitioned to employees as the business grew. That team was close knit and amazing, but ended up being very difficult to replace when the time came. Each position had been molded around the specific strengths of each individual instead of the needs of the business. I think that can work within the energy of a startup, but I learned the hard way that it’s best to think about the roles your business needs and hire for those roles. I look back on that time fondly, so I don’t know if I would have done the initial hiring differently but I wish I would have worked harder to define roles and develop a training program before hiring new team members.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’ve always been happiest when working on a creative project. That led me to Art School, and eventually studying abroad in Italy, where I fell in love with food. Cake design was a way to pursue my passions in both art and food, and I haven’t looked back since I started making cakes in 2005.

Before opening Sweet Heather Anne, I looked for every opportunity I could find to refine my craft. I learned to cook and develop recipes with Eve Aronoff at eve the restaurant and braved Food Network Cake Challenges with Courtney Clark of Cake Nouveau.

When it came to starting Sweet Heather Anne, I jumped in head first without really understanding how to run a business. I made so many mistakes, but I’ve learned from each one and and I’m incredibly proud of where the business is today.

We specialize in artistic wedding and milestone event cakes with a focus on local and high-quality ingredients. As a team of artists, we’ve become known for our creative designs. We love working with clients to create something meaningful for their events. Lately, our most popular designs have been textile-inspired cakes with edible sequins and cakes that look like buttercream oil paintings. We also enjoy experimenting and coming up with new techniques. We’re constantly learning and the work evolves over time.

For smaller occasions, we have an online shop with a beautiful line of pre-designed cakes and desserts. We also teach cake classes both online and in person to share the knowledge that we’ve gained over the years.

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

When I started my business, I was very focused on learning how to make cakes well, and devoted most of my energy to that task. When I started hiring, I continued to put all of my focus on the product instead of the business as a whole. I hired a team to help me bake and decorate the cakes and started to drown in all of the admin involved in running the business. When I took a step back, I realized I had hired people to do the things I was best instead of the things I actually needed help with. Luckily, one of the women who had been volunteering as a decorator asked if I was interested in admin help. She became my first Business Manager and I was able to go back to doing the parts of the job I excelled at. Sweet Heather Anne thrived once we had someone whose main role was to focus on the success of the business.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

2020 was one big pivot for us. As a Cake Studio specializing in wedding cakes, we had a lot of time on our hands once almost all of our 2020 weddings postponed due to COVID. We reinvented our business to cater to local families in quarantine. Our most popular offerings were a Cake Club where we would create a cake in a surprise flavor and design each month and Cookie Decorating Kits. We also partnered with a local flower shop to offer intimate wedding cakes. We went from making 6-8 large wedding cakes per week to up to 70 smaller orders per week. It was a crazy year, but we got through it and now the business is stronger than ever.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.sweetheatheranne.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/sweetheatheranne
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sweetheatheranne
• Other: https://onlinelearning.sweetheatheranne.com/edible-sequins

Image Credits
Bio Photo – Lindsey Billings Photo 1. – Lauren Dahlhauser 2. – Cat Carty Buswell 3. – Cat Carty Buswell 4. – Cat Carty Buswell 5. – Sweet Heather Anne 6. – Sweet Heather Anne 7. – Sweet Heather Anne 8. – Cat Carty Buswell