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

Alright, Kaitlyn thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

Hey there, my name is Kaitlyn and I am going to tell you a little bit about Tilly Mama’s Bakery, which started out of the back of our family business called Ye Ole Butcher Shop out of Plano, Tx. My mom Jerri Sparks began making fried pies for the shop around twelve years ago, starting with just six flavors. About three years ago we started baking cakes and sweet treats for family and family friends. When others started wanting to order, my dad expanded the fried pie area in the back of the restaurant and stocked it with all the necessary baking equipment. We still needed a name though and toyed around with a lot of different names. ‘Tilly’ was what my family nickname was growing up and we knew we needed both ‘Tilly’ and ‘Mama’ to be in the name, and that when “Tilly Mama’s Bakery” was born!

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?

My mom and I work as a team at the bakery. She is the brains of the baking side of the operation. She can bake anything under the sun! After she bakes it, I do all of the decorations and make it not only taste amazing, but look beautiful! We make fifteen flavors of fried pies which we fry fresh every morning to sell at the shop. We also create custom cakes for any special event, and dessert tables of all kinds! We love working together and getting the chance to create new flavors and designs. We also love working with all the wonderful people in the industry and collaborating on lots of fun projects such as styled shoots, networking events and other fun stuff.

One of our favorite moments is seeing people’s faces light up when they try a fried pie for the first time! Some of our most notible flavors are Pecan, Chocolate, Apple and one of our newer creations, Banana Pudding fried pie.

On the cake side of the business, we love getting inside people’s heads and bringing their cake dreams to life. Some of our favorites that come to mind off the top of our head are a cake shaped like the couple’s favorite red truck, a cake shaped like a hamburger, and a half chocolate, half vanilla cake complete with chocolate drip and buttercream vanilla piping. We have so many different delicious flavors but probably one of our most popular cake flavors is our Lemon cake with raspberry filling. Some of our popular dessert table options are our brown butter chocolate chip cookies, oreo dream brownies, Reese’s peanut butter cupcakes and our fun mini fried pies!

Have you ever had to pivot?

I was out in Nashville pursuing a career in songwriting. When COVID hit, it was hard to be away from my family because we are all so close and I was so worried about being away if something happened. It was probably one of the hardest things I’ve gone through making the decision to move back home to Dallas but it has turned out to be so great. People ask me all the time how long I’ve been doing this and the honest answer is not long but we have been blessed with such a wonderful customer base who keep on supporting us! And also, people who had already been supporting the butcher shop for years and buying my mom’s delicious pies. It has been so fun to have started out three years ago and made a wedding cake for a couple and then two years later be making their one year old’s first birthday cake. It is just such a special experience to make these relationships and get to be a part of some of their favorite memories. I still do gigs now and then in Dallas and write when I feel inspired but having the bakery has inspired a whole new creative side of me and getting the chance to do it with my mom, there is just nothing like it.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

I would say this was my side hustle at first. But we took our cakes and fried pies to one bridal show and it kinda spiraled from there. We always say we are busy and we are #blessed. Also, when people learn it’s not just a butcher shop, they’re surprised in the best way! We also sell cake by the slice Friday’s and Saturday’s and have just started a new project called “Cake Jars” which are basically what you’d think, cake in a mason jar!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.yeolebutchershop.com/desserts
• Instagram: @Tillymamasbakery
• Facebook: Facebook.com/Tillymamasbakery
• Other: Tik Tok: @Tillymamasbakery

Image Credits
The five tier white cake photo-Kiser Images