16.5.10

Cake Decorating in small town America

Hey cake virgins!

Living in a smaller town can sometimes mean having a limited selection of goods. Though not always the case, it is for the small town I currently call home, Athens, OH. There are certainly no shortages of alcoholic establishments or strange people (check out my classmates blog about the weird and unusual in Athens), but when it comes to bakeries and cake decorators, the selection is limited.

According to yellowpages.com, there are only 32 bakeries near Athens and only 18 places to buy wedding cakes. In Columbus, which is only an hour and a half away (less if you drive like me) there are 320 bakeries and 130 places to purchase a wedding cake. That doesn't give you a lot of choices if you live here in Athens.

Yes, you could order your cake from another baker who delivers, but with delivery comes the unknown of whether your cake makes it in one beautiful piece or a pile of what used to be a good cake.
   Photo courtesy of Nalnee Khureya
CakeTime is a local Athens bakery, opened in February of this year by Nalnee Khureya. According to the website, CakeTime is a new bakery that specializes in finely decorated organic cakes for all special occasions.

According to Nalnee, decorating in a small town isn't any harder than decorating in a larger city. "Cake decorating is art, [and] you can do art anywhere, big city or small towns or neighborhoods," Nalnee said.  

Though CakeTime has only been open for a few months, Nalnee has been decorating cakes for several years.

"I decorated cakes for the Village Bakery [in] 2003," Nalnee said. "That went on till 2008. Then I took a long break. When I came back things were changed and the space for cake decorating was needed for other bakery operations. I still work at the Village Bakery but my duties changed. I missed cake decorating and with so many people asking for decorated cakes, I saw that the market was there. So with friends' moral support, I decided to give it a go opening up my own business and keep doing what I love."                                                                              

In July of 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division counted only 63,255 people in Athens County. Just the city of Columbus had 733,203 in 2006!

Despite living in a relatively small town, business is good for Nalnee. "At this point [I decorate] 5 to 10 larger decorated cakes, [and] 50-100 cupcakes [a week]," Nalnee said in an interview conducted by email. "Wedding cakes are another story since decorating larger cakes allows [for] even more creativity. With wedding cakes, I can only take one at a time because of the concentration that is needed for that special experience."

Though opening your own business can be difficult, Nalnee has proven that if there is a market for what you want to do, your business can be successful, even in economic times such as these or in small towns such as Athens.

"Athens is where I live, and have for 13 years, so this is where I am now in life. A move to Paris at this time seemed a bit too expensive, so here I am in Athens," Nalnee said. 

So explore your local towns and find those special people that take the time to decorate in small town America. Give them the opportunity to prove to you that great cake decorators are not only in major cities, but in the small towns too.

Until next time cake virgins!

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can see that you are an expert at your field! I am launching a website soon, and your information will be very useful for me.. Thanks for all your help and wishing you all the success in your business. alabama graduation cakes

Post a Comment