CARMEL — Classic Cakes is Carmel cooks up customized orders for your wedding or event, but as events got put on hold in this pandemic, the bakery shifted gears to stay busy.
Newer owner and cake curator, Megan Ritz, learned how to bake cakes here and took over the business in August 2019.
When the pandemic took hold in Spring 2020, weddings and events got pushed back and she had to pivot to keep her staff working.
"We had a lot of weddings that rescheduled multiple times throughout last year," says Ritz. "People have not stopped planning their weddings. They just haven't really known the date, but we have been planning weddings this whole time. We just haven't been having a lot of weddings."
She says her staff continued to bake cakes, utilizing door deliveries and creating more small cakes for at-home celebrations.
"We really sat down and tried to figure out how we could support the community, how we could connect with people, even if our front door had to be closed, we still wanted to be producing cakes and connecting with people," said Ritz.
Ritz and her staff baked more than 3,000 cupcakes for workers at Riley Hospital for Children.
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"It was really nice to just focus on how we could help and connect with the community instead of just worrying about what that was going to mean for us," said Ritz.
She also overcame her fear of Facebook live and started streaming at-home cake decorating tutorials.
"It exploded in a way I never expected," said Ritz who credits the pandemic for pushing her out of her comfort zone.
The bakery continues to grow and expand their online presence and reach customers across the country with their cupcake club.
For general manager, Jennifer Lewis, the orders are picking back up as events get rescheduled and we get back into a more normal life.
"Typically, we will have people schedule like 6 months to a year out, and I have I think 3 people I am working with right now who are getting married in the next two weeks and they are like, I need a cake now," says Lewis.
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Right now, Lewis is standing in as the head baker as Classic Cakes looks to fill a number of positions heading into their busy season.
Cake decorator Alexis Seybert started working at Classic Cakes in July, right in the middle of the pandemic, and also noticed orders have picked up the past few weeks.
"It's definitely picked up in the past month compared to how it was earlier in the year," said Seybert. "It's always nice when they come in and it looks exactly like how they wanted and they are so happy and it's like yay! We did it!"
Classic Cakes is looking to hire a head baker, customer service employees, and decorators right now.
For details on the job descriptions and to apply, you can email Jennifer at Jennifer@classiccakes.com. You can also follow along with their business, cake decorating live streams, and more by visiting their Facebook page.
