We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tykerria Prater. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tykerria below.

Tykerria , appreciate you joining us today. Alright, so we’d love to hear about how you got your first client or customer. What’s the story?

Believe it or not, I actually got my first customer by accident. I wanted to do something special for my mom one year for her birthday. Prior to this, I had just made my first mousse cake because of a insane craving I had for a chocolate dessert one day. So, needless to say, once I found out that baking came almost naturally to me, I was on a roll. I wanted any excuse to make a new dessert. In this case, it was my mom’s birthday. I asked her what she wanted and she was undecided between a red velvet mousse cake and a red velvet cheesecake. So naturally, I made her both. One was a mousse cake with a brownie at the bottom, a red velvet cookie layer, a white chocolate mousse layer, and a cream cheese mousse layer. The other was a no-bake red velvet cheesecake. Of course dessert (especially cold dessert) doesn’t last forever, so that night she says, “Ty, I’m not gonna eat all of this. have your dad take some of this to work to share with his coworkers.” So, that’s exactly what I did. The next day my dad took the rest of the dessert with him to work and everyone was talking about how good it was. I get call from my dad and he’s telling me what everyone is saying. Next thing I know, I’m getting another call from my dad and he says, “Hey Ty, my coworker was talking about how good that mousse cake was and he wants to know how much you charge for it.” Now I never planned on making desserts to sell them, so I was definitely caught of guard by the fact that someone wanted to buy dessert from me. I didn’t have an answer for him in the moment but my dad told me to get back to him on the price. Once I came up with the price, my dad told his coworker and he put in an order for the mousse cake. It kind of just went from there. I had to end up coming up with a name for it because that wasn’t just regular mousse cake. It was definitely something I came up with on the fly. So, the night I made the mousse cake for my dad’s coworker, I named it the ultimate mousse cake because it had so much going on. That one decision sparked Tyrrific Treats! I find it cool that not only was my first customer ever a stranger, but I got my first customer by complete and total accident!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Tykerria, but everyone calls me Ty. I am the owner of Tyrrific Treats. I am currently 28 years old. My business is based out of Georgia. Getting into baking really started for me back in high school, my senior year to be more specific. I had all the credits I needed to graduate and I had already finished my business career path (I believe that’s what it was called). So, I needed an extra elective to fill up my last slot for my classes. I was in all AP and advanced classes at the time, so I just picked what I felt would be the easiest class on that list. That class was a food and nutrition class. All I knew was you got to cook and eat in that class and that sounded like a win in my book. There was an in-class assignment we had one day and it was to follow a recipe for making cookies. I had never baked anything from scratch before, so needless to say, I was so excited! To make things even better……we were making chocolate chip cookies and I LOVE chocolate! Knowing what I know now and having perfected my craft, I can tell you that those cookies were not the best at all! But in the moment, those were the best cookies I ever had and I even took some of them to my next class period to share with my best friend and a couple other people in my class. We all thought that those cookies were just AMAZING! I ended up using that same recipe to bake cookies for a school project I had in an AP Lit class. After that I started baking cookies for trips I went on with my church and it kind went on from there. But all of this was just the spark that got me interested in baking dessert from scratch. What kicked off the official start of Tyrrific Treats was actually me getting my first customer by accident. I made a couple of desserts for my mom that she couldn’t finish by herself. We sent the rest to work with my dad and everyone enjoyed it! One of my dad’s coworkers asked how much I charged to make him that same dessert and it went from there. I ended up kind of falling into a profession that I didn’t know I was going to love as much as I do. I am surrounded by creatives! So, one day I had decided to create an Instgram for Tyrrific Treats with a clipart picture of a whisk as my profile picture. Moiya (my best friend) was tired of looking at it I guess because she randomly messaged me one day and said “I’m gonna make you a logo”. Not too long after that, she drew me the cutest logo and that’s when it actually hit me that I was about to start a real business. Fast forward to now, I make all types of dessert; cookies, brownies, cake, cheesecake, mousse cake, cookie butter, pound cake (thanks to the best boss and mentor I’ve ever had when it comes to baking (Ms. Tina who is the owner of Jewels Treats and More)), blondies, banana pudding, cupcakes! You name it, I probably already have made it or I’m planning to. Not only do I make dessert for the people that just want a little taste of home, but I also make desserts for different events! I do weddings, graduations, birthdays, and parties. I make every dessert from scratch! So, when you taste my dessert, you can feel every bit of love that was put into it. Giving people a taste of homemade dessert has always been important to me since starting this journey and I think that is what sets me apart from a lot of other bakers. I wanted to come up with a slogan that represented that, but I was having the hardest time coming up with one. So, I had to go to the best person I knew for the job (my brother). That’s when he came up with “Homemade treats, making your home a sweet one”. We later ended up shortening it to “Making your home a sweet one”. I am so proud of having such an amazing support system! My family, friends (also family), and people who I’ve built relationships with (who have also become my family) have literally been THE BEST support system I could ever ask for! If there is anything that I would want people to know about myself and my brand, it would be that the love of God is over here and every bit of that love is put into the treats that I make. I would not be able to have gotten this far without the grace and favor of God! He has brought the people I need in my life to help me get this far, shown me favor, and blessed me over and over again to be able to do the things I do now.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I am definitely still in the process of building my social media presence, BUT I will say that my social media presence has definitely grown within the last year! The most effective way that I’ve built my social media presence to where it is now is by meeting new people and talking to them about Tyrrific Treats. There is an event that is held every year in Douglasville called Taste of Douglasville. It’s one of the BIGGEST events that happens one day out of the year. I was a vendor one year and I COMPLETELY over baked. Instead of trying to sell all of those treats, I took the opportunity to self-advertise. I went to Jessie Davis park and told them that I owned my business. After introducing myself and my business, I told them that I was giving out free treats to everyone who took a business card and followed me on social media. A day later, I receive a dm from a content creator named Bear. He said that he met me at the park and that he would love to do a review of some treats. I took a leap of faith and did the content with him. My followers grew by 2k within 2 weeks! My advice to anyone who’s starting out or even who’s been in the game for a while would be to not be afraid to put yourself out there! Be kind to EVERYONE you meet because you never know what or who God has in your path that will turn out to be a MAJOR blessing to you!

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

I know it sounds cliche, but WORD OF MOUTH! People don’t care about something until they know that other people care about something. That’s just the way it is. People want to know that they can trust you and from my experience, that is by getting people to try your product. You can give out free samples, encourage people to share their experience about your product, or encourage people to allow others to try whatever it is that receive from you. I’ve used all three methods and have found that when used in combination with each other, they work EXTREMELY WELL together!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://forms.gle/5woafRqxUTHZFMrCA
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tyrrific.treats?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/100358078558147?ref=PROFILE_EDIT_xav_ig_profile_page_web

Image Credits

My personal photo was done by Victor Bowman (Bowman Photography)