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

Luquana, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I started my career working for the New York City police department. As a 911 dispatcher, I would always bake pastries for my coworkers I was told I should start my business selling pastries, and desserts. in 2016 I started my business A Cake Baked In Brooklyn Dessert catering company. I had many corporate clients in 2018 I resigned from my job as a dispatcher and officially started my business full time in Brooklyn. I’m a very creative person, so I really enjoyed doing lots of catering, making designs, different pastries, a customized desserts for companies when the pandemic happened the whole city shut down and so did my business. At this time everything was virtual, even though though I taught in my business like I would go to school and teach decorating classes decorating classes. I started teaching classes virtually online and one of my first clients online was Red Hook arts program.. making a pivot to teach online with something very new also exciting also like a little bit scary, but I enjoyed teaching online and connecting with all of my students and seeing how they follow the instructions to make something. Totally awesome Creative and they were so happy so I really enjoyed it. As a city continue to be on lockdown I went to Florida I went to Florida to visit my parents. I stayed a couple of months and I eventually moved to Florida cause I was like wow Florida was open and it was tropical beautiful very peaceful and I really fell in love with Florida so I decided to move to Florida and re-create my business in Florida so now I have with a community center where I teach culinary arts. I am so happy and grateful that I’m able to take my passion with me from New York to Florida and re-create my business and it’s amazing. I love it every now and then I fly back to New York to take part of the arts. I was a gingerbread contest at the New York museum in 2023, so I love the arts of New York, and I do fly back so often to get a part of the New York culture and get inspired, from where it all started from. I’ve also had the opportunity to work with students with disabilities and a culinary school so as my journey continues, I’m still finding new ways to incorporate my Culinary instruction and education to that’s really great. We need that I did solve was like they are some young adults with disabilities, and they sometimes can’t find employment or find a scale or trade, and with my instruction or working with partner way to school. I have taught these young students and they went on to find jobs and a culinary fails so it’s been amazing and amazing every day. I’m i’m learning more about myself about Culinary about how far I can push the limits with this culinary journey and education, and really helping and give them back the skills that I learned to other people. what makes me really excited is I’ve always been in a fail to help you know when I work for the police department I was helping people during a traumatic times in their lives are in the situation and to see me leaving that kind of social work fail to go into culinary and still be able to help people and give back and teach people skills and help people reach their potential is nothing but amazing it’s like I’m so happy to be in this position to have this talent to share with people .

Luquana, 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?

Hi, my name is Luquana McGriff. I’m the owner of A Cake Baked In Brooklyn now rebranded to A Cake Baked In Brooklyn and Company. my career was working for the New York City Police Department as an 911 dispatcher I was a self taught pastry chef I went back to school because I really wanted to learn more. Plus I did it for the title of Chef. You know you need some kind of credentials with education, so I went to school and study pastry and Culinary I started my business and the 2018. I have work with many corporate clients such as Goldman Sachs, Citibank, and New York City Housing Authority. I am a Culinary Chef AndI’m a culinary instructor.. I have a partnership school/ centers where I teach culinary classes to students. I have successfully to students with disabilities culinary skills, and they have successfully secured employment in a culinary field. I help students and adults finding their Culinary path to success. I love learning, and I I love teaching people how to learn new skills and the kitchen and set them up with job skills. Almost proud of teaching all my students, but I’m most proud of teaching students with disabilities to see them gain the skills in a confidence of they need to secure employment, or even a confidence to take on these job roles is my most proudest achievement. I was also proud of being able to study in a summer at Columbia. They had a entrepreneur summer workshop and it was amazing and I’m very proud of that time. Also anything that I learned and that I could help others with makes me more most proud and that’s why I’m always driving to learn more and teach more.

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

I think I spoke about it before just really pivoting from the pandemic just figuring out a way what to do when the whole city was shut down I didn’t have a storefront. I was working out of a commercial shared space so it wasn’t like people could just come to my business and buy stuff, so I really had to likework, and also like the city was shut down a lot of office buildings were closed so a lot of my corporate client were closed due to the pandemic, so I started teaching virtual classes online to my students and I generated the income. It made me lean more to like I really enjoyed teaching more than anything so that was a pivot.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

I spoke about it a little bit when I was working for the police department as a 11 dispatcher I started to big pastries and I was kind of like my side hustle. I didn’t see it as anything serious and my coworkers will always tell me like he should start your business and you know this is delicious and where do we buy it and it made me so happy and proud but I didn’t foresee leaving my full-time job and eventually in 2018 I left and I started my business. I started my business with my savings. I didn’t I didn’t have a crowd fund or anything like that. I just kind of bootstrapped it it will bootstrapping you know, but I think back at it it’s like I could’ve did things differently but you know this part of business is part of life if you don’t take those chances, you knowyou would never know if you have to take the chance you know and count on yourself and I’m very proud of myself for doing that

Contact Info:

• Website: www.acakebakedinbrooklyn.com
• Instagram: @bakedinbrooklyn
• Facebook: Acakebaedinbrooklyn
• Linkedin: Luquana McGriff
• Youtube: A Cake Baked In Brooklyn