We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jasmyn Reddicks a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jasmyn, appreciate you joining us today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

From an early age as far as I can remember, my mother and grandmother have also been very supportive of my sister and my dreams. Growing up our mother got us involved in everything and we rarely had a boring summer despite being from a rural small town. We were involved in church ministries, volunteering groups, clubs, and sports. Although we did not grow up with a silver spoon and come from a very shelter background our mother was always looking up things for us to do or encouraging up to be a part of our community in some way. She always expressed that we needed to see the world despite where we came from and if we work hard we can do anything we put our mind to. Looking back I believe the support and freedom to explore our creativity really impacted me in deciding whether to fully pursue entrepreneurship. For that, I am forever grateful that I was raised in a household that allowed me to build my character in life experiences.

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?

VTasteCakes was first born during my senior year at the University of Georgia where I competed in an entrepreneurship competition and won first place with the idea of bringing people together one dessert at a time by creating sustainable allergy-friendly cakes infused with vegetables. Since winning the competition my team and I divided the funds up and I started VTasteCakes with the funding. After our humble beginnings and the support of the community, we have expanded into our third largest commercial kitchen space, hired amazing employees, and created a multitude of treats that we provide across Atlanta. We are most proud of still being here despite all odds and it’s been amazing to transform people’s lives by providing delicious vegan desserts that have helped change the negative narrative people associate with vegan desserts.

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

With starting a business in college, I’ve had to pivot several times in life to get to where I am today. One of the biggest pivots I took was deciding to go full-time with the company. I had recently lost my job during the pandemic and I had the option to either find a new job or grow my company. This decision was very difficult since I had recently moved my business to the city of Atlanta, and was still trying to grow my audience. What helped was my sister deciding to become my business partner. With her background in business analytics and marketing as well as my background in food science and agribusiness, we changed my business plan completely. We went from being a cupcakery to a whole bakery. This was no overnight success and took months of many late nights to create new recipes, research how to market our product, and build a website and social media platform from the ground up. Despite being one of the hardest decisions of my life, I am thankful for the changes and truly believe these changes elevated VTasteCakes and have kept us growing during the pandemic.

How did you build your audience on social media?

We were able to build out social media based on three things- consistency, data, and figuring out our targeted market. These three things really helped us during the pandemic to figure out how to navigate the social media world. Consistency is key because people who love your product always want to come back if your quality is consistent and in our case looks as good as it tastes. Finding your targeted market is important so you can know what to post to attract that audience. Lastly, data is important because it can tell you so much about your business and what your targeted audience likes and dislikes. Learning these three things can truly make or break a business.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.vtastecakes.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vtastecakes/?hl=en

Image Credits
Jasmyn Reddicks StylishLe Captured (headshot)- Aleta