Sweet Sugar Bakery – David Benton
#039 – Today, David Benton joins us. David is an Oakland Baker and the owner and operator of Sugar Sweet Bakery. David started cooking as a child. As an adult, he hosted dinner parties where friends came over – they really liked the food. At the constant urging of one of those friends he decided to give culinary school a chance. He went in thinking he would be chef, but he fell in love with the art of baking and never looked back
“I allowed my imagination to go a little more further than say if I were to just making croissants or something. I started playing with those kind of things. I started doing them, I started getting more bold with what I was trying to do things that were a little more eye-catching and stuff. And so that’s kind of like how that started. It started just from those little bit of classes, but in those classes I excelled and people noticed and they liked it. And I really liked it. And then by the end of the school year came, I knew I didn’t want to be a chef”.
Baking tasty cakes and cookies is one thing, getting a business open is something entirely different. David admits that he struggles to call himself a business person. He is a creative person, but he’s had to learn how to run a business.
After getting a bank loan, he thought he’d be open in 3 months, but 3 months turned into 2 years. Every step of the way, something else would come up. And before he knew it, he was broke – he ran through all of his money. The bank called and asked him to account for the money. After producing all the receipts, bank statements, and tax returns, they offered him another loan, which is what allowed him to finally open.
Berekleyside wrote an article about his troubles and that led to even more publicity. His phone was ringing off the hook. He wasn’t ready for it – he only had 1 employee and all of a sudden the lines were out the door.
David’s secret to success is he bakes “old fashioned” items that remind people of their past – things their grandmother’s used to make. He doesn’t use anything out of a box or out of a can. One of the best compliments came from a customer during a wedding cake tasting.
“He was about to get married and he wanted a coconut cake. And so I made the coconut cake for him. And our coconut cake has coconut milk in it and his coconut extract and you know, I love to flavor it up. Well, believe it or not, this man started crying because he said the coconut cake tasted like something his grandmother made when he was a little boy”.
Be sure to listen to the whole interview to hear how his business doubled during COVID.
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