How did you decide to get into the cheesecake business?
When we were home during the pandemic in 2020 our daughter Emily was in love with baking cakes and watching the baking shows where they compete against one another. One of our sons had asked her to bake a cheesecake. So Emily, did some research and created a recipe she felt would make a great cheesecake and we still use that same recipe today.
When did you decide to turn it into a business?
Once Emily knew her cheesecake wasn’t just good, but excellent, she wanted to sell them as a fundraiser to buy a KitchenAid mixer. We sold hundreds of her cheesecakes in a short period of time. We were staying up late and waking up early to make sure everything was getting done. At that point we knew we needed a commercial kitchen and a retail space to sell them.
How was your experience opening a new store selling only cheesecake?
We had over 600 people come in that first day and did $4,000 in sales from a space that had no exposure, no foot traffic, and faced the woods on a back road of a mall. We stayed in that space for 14 months until we found our current corporate store location in the Target shopping plaza in Cleveland, TN.
What is your biggest sales day since you have been open?
We had a day where we were raising money for a local family that had a little girl with pediatric cancer. We did $12,500 that day and was able to help raise $15,000 for the family.
If you could do it all over again, would you?
We couldn’t imagine ever doing anything else. We have 16 fantastic team members, we live in a community that embraces us and our product, and we get to sell the absolute best cheesecakes in the world that our daughter created. This is one of the reasons franchising excites us. We get to experience the buildouts, grand openings, and all the fun and exciting times every time we help a franchisee open a new location.