Gracie Cakes

Kids with an entrepreneurial spirit are my weakness.

A bit of background. When I was teen, I owned a horse that I liked to show off at horse shows. My sweet mom rode too, and together with friends, we would travel to local horse shows and events. One year, we wanted to attend a bigger, better horse show 200 miles from home. The expense was considerable, and my dad was not all that keen on the idea. This did not stop my mother. She enlisted the help of a friend whose daughter also wanted to travel to the show; they set up a burrito stand at all the local horse shows and sold burritos to fund our trip. My mom and her friend brought a lot of class to the burrito cart biz, and their first class burritos sold out several weeks in a row. It wasn’t long before we had enough cash to hitch up the horse trailer and take our show on the road. The burrito stand was closed and sorely missed around the old horse show arena.

My sweet mom taught me that you are always just a burrito away from what you want and encouraged my entrepreneurial spirit. Share an idea, and I’ll come up with 10 ways you can make money with it. Most people won’t act on any of them though. They’ll have a million reasons why my suggestions won’t work. It never occurred to my mom and her friend that they might need a food handling license. It would have occurred to their husbands, but they had a line 20 deep waiting for burritos before their husbands heard the rumor about where to get the best burrito in town. I watched and learned.

Camp-Run-A-Pup was started when I decided that I wanted to leave the advertising biz and stay home with Cole. My mom suggested that I welcome a few pups into my home, and by our first Christmas, every crate, bedroom, and bed was booked. We had guinea pigs in one bathroom and a cat in the other. Joe didn’t have a chance to object until a cat blindsided him in the bathroom.

I digress … or perhaps I “Ohio.” * The subject of this post is entrepreneurial kids and how excited I become when I encounter one up close and personal.

Grace is a freshman at the Chicago Waldorf School and makes beautifully decorated cupcakes. Her mother posts pictures of them on Facebook. It’s hard to ignore beautifully decorated cupcakes. Soon people began to ask if they could buy the cupcakes, and Grace’s mother shared her daughter’s contact information. I was Gracie Cakes first paying customer. I bought 24 dog-themed cupcakes.

Full disclosure. I had no idea what I would do with two dozen dog-themed cupcakes when I placed my order with Gracie Cakes. After I picked them up, I decided that I would hand them out to client-friends when picking up their pups from camp. But I soon learned this was a bad idea when I handed a client-friend a cupcake in a small, open box. She oohed, aahed, and thanked me before setting the cupcake on the seat beside her. I handed off her excited pup, whom she put in the back seat. Well, you know the rest of the story. It all happened so quickly.

However, my lack of planning isn’t the point. The point is that Grace took my dog-themed cupcake order and turned it into 24 adogable (thank you Beth Ann) cupcakes, for a fair price and within the time frame we discussed. Checking in with me to make sure fondant and sprinkles were ok, her communication skills were par excellence. Sprinkles! Who doesn’t love sprinkles? The cupcakes were moist and yummy. I’m sure they are made from her grandmother’s secret cupcake recipe. Or perhaps she mixed them up from a box of Duncan Hines. Nothing wrong with Duncan Hines.

Grace is an entrepreneur. She took something she loved to do, practiced it, marketed it and sold it. Gracie Cakes is open for business. Her parents supported her efforts, and I was lucky enough to be her first paying cupcake customer. I am certain not to be her last. Investing in young entrepreneurs is something we all need to do, whether it be a lemonade stand, a garage sale, or the start of a cupcake empire.

Go Gracie! You have fondant your calling—one of many I suspect!

Would anyone like a cupcake?

Odd Loves Company,

If you are local and would like information about how to contact Gracie to discuss cupcakes for your party or event, please e-mail me or leave a message in the comments, and I will provide you with contact information.

* We love our friends from Ohio! And it has been my experience that people from Ohio love a long, involved story…that goes on and on and leaves you wondering what the original point might have been. It’s hard to explain, but if you know an Ohioan you get it.  By the way, Beth Ann (blogger and partner in puns) is from Ohio.