We recently connected with Torre Edwards and have shared our conversation below.

Torre, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

I’ve officially started my cake decorating last year and currently working on my building. I’m different in my business that I enjoy doing sculpted cakes or 3D cakes. Cakes that looks close to the object.

Torre, 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?

I started out making cakes just for friends and family. I enjoyed it so much did I decided to go to Le cordon bleu to become a pastry chef. While I was attending school I also taught cake decorating at Joannes. When I was younger, I always enjoyed art sculpting, and drawing with that under my belt making sculptor cakes 3-D cakes is my specialty. I also do weddings, and special occasions. As of 2022 I am officially Ana Creative, Cakes, LLC. I also just purchased my building to open up for walk-in business. I’m so excited for that.

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

About 12 years ago I went to Sam’s one day to get my husband a cake for his birthday to share with our church members. The day that I went to pick up the cake they must have forgot to make it, so they pulled one out the freezer iced it quickly and put some balloons on it and wrote his name. the sad part besides it not looking nice it time was still frozen. I was so upset that I said I can do this myself. I decided to go to JoAnn and signed up to take a Wilson Cake decorating classes. The instructors was impressed with me that they made sure I took every class due to them seeing my talent. At the time I was working at the VA medical center and was doing a cakes on the side for fellow employees, families and friends. I enjoyed cake decorating so much that I decided to go to Le cordon bleu and become a patisserie chef. For two years I was going to classes everyday to Le cordon bleu, taught cake decorating classes at Joannes all while still working full time at the VA .After my graduation from Le cordon bleu I decided to just do cake decorating for myself full time. I was getting orders form friends, and family, referrals, as well as referrals from social media. I was getting so many orders that I was overbooked for years and growing out of my little space at home. Right before Covid hit my husband and I decided to purchase a building in Fairview Heights and officially as of this month of April 2023 Our building is paid in full. When Covid hit I realize there’ was so many businesses had went under due to having a overhead. So we decided that we want to own our building and property and now we can start on remodeling and renovating for my grand opening soon.

I did it for about three years and decided to go to Le cordon bleu it’s become a Patisserie Chef. I could see you do Cakes) on his side while working at the VA medical center and decided to give them my two weeks in store doing cakes full-time they were 16 I’ve been doing cakes and I decided to give my LLC and make my business official as of this year, I paid off a building in for the one day will be my cake decorating business

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

My business started from just friends and family referrals, but once I got on social media all those friends and family grew to thousands of friends. Every cake that I did I posted it on social media and my friends and family start sharing on their page that grew my account to thousands and the rest is history.

But they hit all end it in March of this year, when my account has been hacked. And I lost all my contacts as well as my customers for my business. I decided to get back on social media with a new page. We all get tested to see how much you really want it. I’m not gonna let this little setback set me back and with the Lords will I will get all my customers and more.

My advice is to post your talent the. Try to post something every day to get your followers something to be interested in and interact it in.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: AnaCakes618
• Facebook: Torre A Edwards / AnaCakes618
• Linkedin: Ana Creative Cakes
• Twitter: CakeLady618
• Youtube: AnaCakes618