Cake & Sugar Company – Daphani Hightower
#040 – Today we visit with Chef Daphani Hightower, the owner and operator of The Cake & Sugar Company. Chef Daphani has an incredible story and continues to persevere in the face of adversity. She lost her son’s father to COVID and was diagnosed with stage 3 stomach cancer in 2022. The cancer diagnosis has inspired her to forge ahead to create a legacy for her children.
She started cooking for her then husband, an ex football player, to help him lose 300 pounds over 10 months. While cooking one day, she decided to try to make her own candy and cupcakes. She found a love for baking and decided to go to culinary school. She found that most Bay Area bakers were making the same tired desserts. Dissatisfied with the status quo, she decided to experiment with flavors and that is where she found her niche.
“Everybody’s making a banana pudding, but we here at the Cake and Sugar Company, we have 30 flavors of banana pudding. So you’re not running up on us with just a regular flavor. We have Red Velvet, Carrot Cake, German Chocolate, Peach Cobbler, Banana Pudding. You know, we have so many different flavors. I just want it to be different. And so we’ve made, cinnamon roll peach cobbler”.
Peach Cobbler cupcakes are her top seller so she includes them in her $50 box, which includes a half dozen cupcakes and a host of cookies she sells via social media. She posts and within an hour – she’s sold out. It’s not a subscription so you have to be ready when she posts.
Chef Daphani started in Oakland, then moved to Hayward for lower rent. She recently found a larger space in Oakland so she is coming back to expand her business. Being an Oakland based business is very important to her:
“…you can’t be in Oakland without being about community. You will fail. You have to be here, you have to show up. Whether it’s you showing up for Oakland kids, whether you showing up for your school, your kids’ school, after school program. However it looks, if you live here, you work here, you’re here, you need to participate . So that is what is definitely important to me”.
Be sure to listen to the whole interview to hear how he delivered cupcakes to Damon Wayans backstage after one of his shows.
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