Success A Piece Of (Small) Cake | Husband-wife bakery biz expands from Warren to Leominster
Photo/Amanda Roberge
RECIPE FOR SUCCESS: Tessa Dagger got the idea for cake baked into a ball shape from a recipe online. She, along with her husband Chris, turned that experiment into a business, now with two locations.
As the old saying goes, good things come in small packages. Well, that notion just got a little sweeter.
Still in its infancy, the firstborn “baby” for Tessa and Chris Dagger, who were married in 2006, is a rapidly growing business known as Cakettes. Having celebrated the first anniversary of their Warren store only a few months ago, the pair are already in expansion mode, having just opened a new location in Leominster. And word of mouth has been good so far. In its first two official days open, the Leominster location had sold out of every Cakette in the case by lunchtime.
“It was phenomenal,” Tessa said of opening weekend turnout for the Leominster shop, which is located inside the Tilton & Cook Retail Co-op, known locally as the Spruce Street Flea Market, in the space formerly home to Coffee Craze. “Many of the tenants said they have never seen it so busy in here.”
For both stores, amazingly, the duo has done nothing to advertise. “We just turned around the OPEN sign and the people started coming,” she said. And this is relatively hard to imagine, given that both locations are situated firmly off the beaten path. With minimal foot traffic and very little possibility of people stumbling upon the shop, the Daggers know that every person who walks through the door is looking for one thing and one thing only.
Small Bites
So what exactly is a Cakette? While it may look strikingly like a chocolate truffle you’d find in a red satin heart-shaped box, the mini-treat is actually a lovingly crafted ball of cake that is dipped in chocolate and decorated. And if you are sitting there asking yourself why you didn’t think of that, you wouldn’t be the first. The innovative business is taking the bakery world by storm — for gifts, favors and just a little pick-me-up for your average sugar fiend.
Each Cakette will cost you just under a dollar and about 76 calories — a fair price to pay for the pleasure you’ll receive. Gift boxes can be purchased in packages of four, nine and 16 — and the Daggers have found them to be a popular gift for all occasions.
The idea for the business was born when Tessa stumbled across a recipe for a cake ball online. Trying her hand at making them armed only with a cake mix and some frosting in a Ziploc bag, she crafted a tray of goodies to bring to her day job as a cashier.
“Everyone at work went ballistic,” she laughs. From that moment on, Dagger’s delights were in high demand. “People were asking me to make hundreds of them, for wedding favors, for baby showers. It was Chris who said, ‘Do you want to just start a business?’ ”
Chris, a native of England, is the business mind behind the operation. With the help of only a handful of employees back in Warren who make the little orbs of cake for Tessa to dip and decorate, Chris intends to be onsite at the Leominster store for the time being.
“He’s constantly looking for ways to improve, looking out for the bottom line, analyzing costs,” Tessa said. “He is definitely better on that end — I am the creative one.”
Broadening Horizons
Since opening, business has steadily increased. This past December alone, largely through the use of an online ordering system, the couple made and sold over 12,000 Cakettes — a record month and one from which they were thoroughly exhausted.
The profits, however, enabled the Daggers to set up the new shop.
According to Tessa, the idea is to continue to set up shops and get them running smoothly before selling them to an independent buyer and moving on to the next startup.
They have entered into a franchise arrangement with a woman in Los Angeles who happens to be from Dagger’s hometown of Warren.
“It’s important to me to be making a product that people enjoy, but also to make sure we are keeping the quality and integrity under control,” she said.
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments