Meet the Entrepreneur – Caribbean Cupcakes and cakes

My Name is Tracey Byer and I am the Managing Director of Caribbean Cupcakes and Cakes.

Growing up I used to watch my mother bake, she didn’t do it very often but that’s what made it such a special occasion when she did. At a very early age I would go to the library and borrow books on making cakes. It was more trial and error at that time but I always had a passion for making cakes.

I started the Caribbean Cupcakes & Cakes online but continued working my day job until I took redundancy to progress the business. It was very scary at first, could I manage to live to the same standard I had with my 9-5 working for myself. Nowadays the fears are more concerns, mainly around keeping the same consistency and maintaining product standards.

I wanted to incorporate my heritage and recognise the heritage of our Caribbean rum cake as well as making reference to the other cakes that we do.

It largely depends on the time of the year but at our busiest I can work anything from 16-18 hours a day.

I can’t really say there’s a typical day, but in any one day I might start off with answering emails and messages, then the ovens go on and the first of many batch of cakes will go in, we’ll also wrap and box the cakes that we send out in the post, buy and order more stock, decorate cakes. My days are varied with the same tasks, depending on the workload.

It’s very hard finding a work life balance and switching off at closing time, I’m always tempted to answer evening messages and I never really switch off even on holiday!

I love it when you get positive feedback from customers especially the messages where they say our cakes remind them of their childhood or being back in the Caribbean. That really motivates me.

I think there are different definitions for success, in the different areas of your life but in this one, success to me is being consistent at what you do, being able to maintain the same standards and having customers return time and time again.

I’d definitely have started earlier, I’d have dived in without waiting for the perfect business card, website etc. Over the years I’ve become less caught up with those things, as long as your site works, is found and easy enough to navigate, then you can concentrate on the things you do best.

I would say to give it a go, have a plan and depending on where you’d like to end up, keep stepping in the direction towards it but be prepared for your business to come first and to put in some very hard work.

There are many challenges when you run a business but the main challenge I’m still yet to conquer is to reach more customers nationally who aren’t able to get Caribbean cakes where they live. I often get customers outside of London who do find us saying that they can’t get anything like what we do where they live. That continues to be a challenge for me, and trying not to eat too many cakes!!!