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

Hi Renita, thanks for joining us today. Do you manage your own social media?

Social Media is a full-time job, however I find time to fit it in. With assistance from my daughter, I try to keep my 2 main platforms Instagram & Facebook current as possible with posting content. Keeping up with Social Media trends is a challenge. One day it’s still photos, the next it’s videos or reels to keep your audience engaged and continue returning to your page to see your latest post. Besides Instagram & Facebook, we’re also present on TikTok and You Tube.

I personally take all photos displayed across platforms. Before uploading any still photos, I consult with my husband & daughter to get their marketing stamp of approval.

As Essie’s Delights grows, I will eventually need to hire my daughter as the Social Media Content Manager. Currently, she takes this role as an inhouse unpaid intern.

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’m Renita McPherson, owner of Essie’s Delights LLC, AKA “Rè The Flavor Queen” of combinations.
My passion for baking and cooking came from watching my grandmother, Essie Mae, cook at home. I lived in Fayetteville, NC, and loved to help cook and serve dinners and desserts in the kitchen at Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church. Serving dinners and tasty desserts brought joy to my heart for baking and feeding others.

The first dessert I ever baked was a Sprite Pound Cake, which was inspired by the movie “Soul Food” DVD case! That Pound Cake started my journey. From that point on, I cooked and shared desserts with co-workers, friends, and family.

I enjoyed flavors and began to experiment with them. I branched out and took classes to expand my knowledge. I started baking Pies and Cheesecakes with all kinds of flavor combinations. That evolved into Cakes and Cupcakes.

All the while, knowing that baking is my secret place, my place of refuge, and a slice of peace. From that Pound Cake, the love turned into Cakes, Cupcakes, Cheesecakes, Cookies, Sweet Potato Pies, and all types of Sweet Delights. What started as a hobby is now a lifelong dream coming true.

I specialize in those over-the-top flavor combinations not offered in your local grocery stores. Our goal is to add extra special tasty desserts to celebrations that are tasty and nice on the eye.

I want everyone to taste the love and feel the authenticity put into every dessert custom created with YOU in mind. Essie’s desserts will “leave your tastebuds tingling for more”!

I may be the sole baker, but I can’t run this business without my husband, children, family members and close friends.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I originally operated Essie’s Delights as a Cottage home-based Bakery in Connecticut legalizing all aspects right before COVID shut the world down. Once COVID hit, I quickly stopped taking orders for the safety of my family as well as Customers. Although orders stopped, I never stopped pursuing my dream. I continued to perfect recipes, participated in online classes, joined different Baking Groups and even took a Food Photography online course. I was determined to not let COVID be the death of my achieving my dream by owning a business.

The biggest pivot in my business, career & life happened in Feb 2021. At that time both my husband and I jobs were fully remote. I was setup in our family room, and he worked upstairs in the kitchen. In between meetings, he called me upstairs and asked me to sit down. Once I sat down, he began to tell me he just received a call that his department was downsizing and yes you guessed it, he was one of the people that would be let go. For most people, they probably would’ve been devastated and panicking on how they would pay their bills. Well, it was the total opposite for our household. What others may have looked at as an issue, we looked at it as a BLESSING. We had always talked about relocating to NC and looked at his position being eliminated as the sign we were looking for. What God has for you is for you and that layout was meant to happen for us. He was laid off in Feb and given his last day of employment as 3/5. Needless to say, my husband was employed with another job by the time 3/5 rolled around. There was no need to worry because our Faith is strong.

We immediately started making plans to relocate once school ended and we did just that. Both our employers allowed us to continue working remote from NC.

With the move to NC, I had to shut down Essie’s Delights. Moving to a new state meant having to find new customers as well as keep the existing ones. The vision had already been given to me that Essie’s Delights would be in NC and that’s where it would bloom to its greatest potential. It took exactly a year to the date from relocating to legalize Essie’s Delights in NC. During that time, I wanted to make sure I didn’t stop baking, so I created a YouTube channel “Rè The Flavor Queen”. This way I could still do what I love and share with others. In addition to help get over being an introvert and the need to meet new like-minded business owners, I interviewed with Launch Knightdale to be a part of a 10-week intense Entrepreneur Mentorship Program. In addition to the 10 weeks of coursework, we also received 3 months of one-on-one mentoring.

I’ve also completed an 8-week course on developing my own course to teach what I’m so passionate about. I recently completed a class on how to attract Corporate Clients. This will benefit my business if I decide to shift from Business to Customer to Business to Business.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Before I even knew all the business aspects of running an actual business versus just creating and baking tasty delights, there were people looking out for me supporting the vision. A close family friend secured and purchased Essie Delights domain in 2019. This friend purchased the domain and renewed it every year along with securing a professional email address. Neither of us knew how to create a website especially on the host platform where the domain was stored. A year passed and we did put a landing page stating, “website coming soon”. That landing page stayed up for 2 years, while I was trying to find someone that could build out my vision. With no luck on finding designers for that particular host site and tired of sounding like a broken record saying it’s coming soon; I started building out a site on a different platform in 2021. I was using premade templates, but it just wasn’t the vision.

Fast forward to 2022, I joined a Baking Community group and within that group I was introduced to a designer. From one conversation, a few Instagram DM messages and emails, everything I had been trying to do for the past 3 years he did in less than 2 months. I was able to FINALLY see my vision right before my eyes.

My husband looked at the website and said, “this guy is great”!!!! He could see the designer really understood my vision.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.essiesdelights.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/essies_delights
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/Essiesdelights1
• Youtube: Rè The Flavor Queen
• Yelp: Essie’s Delights
• Other: www.tiktok.com/@essiesdelights

Image Credits
Blessed & Crown pics credited to Photography by Darryl Morrow Remaining photos taken by Essie’s Delights