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

Kendra , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

We put a huge priority on making our products from scratch. We don’t use any cake mixes whatsoever. We make an Italian Meringue based buttercream icing. Many bakeries do American Buttercream which is powdered sugar base, and can sometimes have a grainy texture to it and be overly sweet.

We provide regular desserts as well as gluten free and vegan options. We have an order minimum of 6 for cupcakes for non-retail flavors and we like at least 2 days notice. We can make the Vegan items with soy milk, almond milk or coconut milk as needed for the customer. A lot of people call and ask about vegan options and often times they are surprised that we have anything or they’re like half expecting us to say we don’t do it.

I also feel like we approach custom cake designs in a different way. Clients provide reference photos from Pinterest or Google and we use it as a starting off point rather than trying to re-create a carbon copy of an exact cake design. We work with customers to see what specific elements they like from what they’ve shown us and make suggestions and tweaks to give them a unique custom cake. After they’ve had a few cake orders with us, sometimes they will give us more creative freedom, and that is when the really fun cakes evolve. My head cake decorator, Kara is a big fan of anime, so there has been many times when parents come in to order a cake for their child and they know the name of the show but none of the specifics. She will just jump in and come up with an awesome cake. I think it’s good to have a color scheme and a basic starting point to get the ball rolling though. It’s better if I don’t have to draw a cake design. I’m great at decorating the cakes but not amazing at drawing them.

Kendra , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Kendra Eden. I am a wife and a mother of 2. I was born on Fort Meade Military Base and now my business is located about 2 minutes from the base. I am a true Marylander, and I love seafood.

When I was very young, my mom took the Wilton Cake Decorating classes that they offered at craft stores and she always made nice birthday cakes for me and my siblings. So at an early age I definitely associated celebrations with having a special cake and it probably sparked my interest in baking and decorating.

I have an Associate’s Degree in Culinary Arts from Anne Arundel Community College. As well as a Bachelor’s Degree in Baking and Pastry Arts from Johnson & Wales University.

I worked for several years in the hotel industry as a Pastry Chef at Gaylord National Convention Center and Resort and as a Pastry Cook at Grand Hyatt DC. After having my first child, I decided that I no longer wanted to commute to the Washington DC Metropolitan area and that I would pursue my dream of opening my own bakery. The bakery humbly began in 2018 with me baking cake orders from my home kitchen. At that stage the business was called Kendra’s Confections. By the time I got my business plan approved and got funding, the name evolved into Sweet Eden Bakeshop. My entire family and especially my husband were very supportive in getting the brick and mortar store open, so I wanted our surname represented. It really is a family business.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

We had to pivot during the beginning of Covid. I feel like we were just beginning to get regulars when Covid hit, we had only been open for about 5 months. We closed in March 2020 for 2 months. I was incredibly lucky that my entire staff was ready to come back to work, once we were able to re-open. With the extra money the government was giving out along with the usual unemployment revenue, there were many people that stayed out of work and just collected money at home. When we re-opened we added Door Dash, just in case another shutdown happened, we would have a contactless way to still conduct business. We also focused on smaller cake orders since the group numbers for parties were required to be 10 or less people. We took on more cake orders on week days versus, we used to have larger cake orders on the weekends. Weddings were somewhat nonexistent for most of 2020, but when they picked back up in 2021 we pushed the cake and cupcake combo. A lot of brides wanted a cutting cake and then we did individually boxed cupcakes. Easy for guests to grab and go, covid friendly way to serve dessert.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

I think word of mouth is always best. We get customers that had a piece of cake at someone’s birthday party and asked where they bought the cake from. We haven’t been around that long (almost 4 years now) but we get a lot of Google Reviews too, which is basically word of mouth from a stranger. Most of them are excellent, even though I never remember to ask people for them, so I’m glad they are compelled to do it on their own. It seems to be very helpful. I hear people come in all the time and say they saw we had a high rating on Google.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.sweetedenbakeshop.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/sweetedenbakeshop
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/sweetedenbakeshop
• Other: We have a pinterest page

Image Credits
SSG John Miller Instructor Anna Brown Kendra Eden