CHARLOTTE - On a Monday night Jeremy Davis is standing over an electric mixer in his kitchen whipping buttercream frosting for a three-tier vanilla birthday cake.
During the day Davis, 39 and a father of three, is the associate director of Michigan State University's Executive Masters of Business Administration Program.
But for the past year his weeknights have looked just like this one. He's wearing an apron and bright orange slip-on Crocs purchased for just this sort of night-time baking session. They lessen aches and pains he gets after five or six hours of mixing, measuring and decorating baked goods.
Shawnae Davis said her husband rarely wears them outside of their Charlotte home.
A few feet away the family's dining room is still decorated with superhero streamers hanging from the ceiling, remnants from his daughter Calla's fourth birthday party over the weekend.
"Daddy, daddy, daddy."
Calla rushes over, clutching her tablet. She shows it to him, while he clicks off the mixer. "Somebody else made a unicorn cake just like you!"
"Really?" he says. "Cool."
He turns back to the task at hand.
Davis has a few different cake orders to fill by the weekend. Over the next few hours he'll pull cakes he's already baked from the freezer and unwrap them before cutting each in three sections, sprinkling them with a simple sugar syrup and spreading thick layers of the frosting on each. Then he'll stack them back together.
Designing and making a custom cake can be a lengthy, and, at times, tedious process, but Davis loves the work.
He calls his home baking business, Designed by Daddy, his "side hustle," and this month is its one-year anniversary.
MORE ON LSJ.COM:
Court of Appeals: No immunity for Eaton County in dispute over flooding
Dolson restaurant closes its doors in Charlotte
Fatal horse shooting still a mystery
'I wanted to do it'
Before December of 2016 Davis had almost no practical baking experience, and today he said he is still not much of a cook.
"I can make sloppy Joe's and tacos," Davis said. "That's my cooking."
But baking came easy to him. Last winter he saw a video tutorial for making Christmas cookies, and decided to bake some and gift them to his co-workers. Several batches later he managed to do just that.
A month later he tackled a cake recipe Calla had seen on Food Network for her birthday. The single-tier, four-layer, lemon cake with raspberry filling and a fondant covering with cookies on top took about four days to make.
"Essentially, I had to learn everything, all the science and the chemistry behind it, but it was a blast," Davis said. "It wasn't something I'd ever thought I'd do."
Neither did anyone at Calla's party. Hardly anyone could believe he'd made it himself. Once he'd convinced them, several people asked him to make something for them.
Why not? Davis thought.
"It wasn't my plan to have a business," he said. "But I wanted to do it. I could do it."
Davis put together a business plan and Designed by Daddy was born. The name is a nod to his role as a dad, and Davis hangs his hat on that.
It surprises some people.
“Even now people are like, ‘It says Designed by Daddy, but mommy really does it, doesn’t she?’" Shawnae said. "I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me? No. It’s all daddy.’”
Davis turned a profit less than four months into starting the home business, despite needing to make investments in baking equipment and supplies up front.
He's been building a clientele and honing his baking chops ever since. In the last year he's filled more than 200 orders, making cakes, cupcakes and cookies for weddings, birthdays and other events. Some clients live nearby in Eaton Rapids and Charlotte. Others live in Detroit.
The success doesn't surprise Shawnae, who said her husband displayed a knack for baking from the start.
"If you gave me the same tools I couldn't create what he creates," she said. "He has always been the creative one."
'There are no rules'
Chara Thacker said the cake Davis made for her father's 70th birthday in September was one-of-a-kind. The U.S. Air Force and Vietnam War veteran's hat became Davis' inspiration after she sent him a photo of her father.
The chocolate and peanut butter flavored cake looked exactly like it, and displayed photos of Thacker's father on either side.
"It was almost an exact replica of the hat my dad wears every day," she said. "We left it up to him. We had no idea what we would pick up. His cakes are fantastic and they taste so good."
Davis said customer satisfaction is what matter most when he's designing and creating something.
And he loves the freedom it gives him.
"There are no rules," he said. "I'm not scared to try something. I can make it as big, or as little as I want, although I do miss sleep."
Most of the work happens at night, Davis said, after everyone else in his family is sleeping. He's a night owl, he said, and everything is baked from scratch. When he isn't baking or designing he's updating Designed by Daddy's website and Facebook page. He said he's gotten a lot of support from other area bakers.
"I'm usually up until midnight, 1 a.m. doing different things," Davis said.
"And Friday night we don't book things, because that's cake night," Shawnae said.
Most orders are picked up or delivered on Saturday. Davis said it's the look on a customer's face that makes all the work worthwhile.
"I worry about making sure that they're happy," he said. "I want to make sure that they really like it."
Contact Reporter Rachel Greco at (517) 528-2075 or rgreco@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @GrecoatLSJ.
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Charlotte man's 'side hustle?' Custom cakes and cookies 'Designed by Daddy'"
Post a Comment