It is only over the past decade or so that the popularity of cupcakes has really gone through the proverbial roof here in Guyana. The current rave derives mainly from the ever increasing popularity of lavish children’s parties and the increasing demand for eye-catching distractions as part of those celebratory occasions.
All that aside, cupcakes have brought new dimensions of creativity and artistic flair to the pursuit of baking.
Malika Lynch’s previous ‘credentials’ fit snugly with her current attachment to cupcakes. Not only has she loved baking from childhood, but she is, these days, a mother of three young children. Leaving those credentials aside, it was a certain entrepreneurial instinct that drew her to Cup Cakes.
As with many ventures like Malika’s Cup Cakes and Things enterprise, transforming a passion into a business pursuit was, in large measure, the result of encouragement from friends who recognised her talent and encouraged her to exploit it.
The venture ‘hit the road’ as an entrepreneurial pursuit in 2015. Her first ‘assignment’ saw her baking three hundred cakes for a friend’s office party. Favourable reviews, she says, emboldened her. An advertisement was posted on her Facebook page and the responses ‘rolled in.’
If the responses to her Facebook advertising were encouraging, they also created an acute awareness of the pressures associated with combining the responsibilities of a wife and mother with entrepreneurial pursuits that demanded much more of you. Children’s birthday parties were, in themselves ‘a stretch.’ What she quickly discovered, however, was that the delicate and decorative little things were also in demand at weddings, bridal showers, and school parties, occasions at which, perhaps, one might not have anticipated a high demand for cupcakes.
But the pleasantness of the pursuit takes the demanding edge from the making of cakes, Malika says. You get to dabble in the good feeling of the ingredients like buttercream, icings, chocolate, and an array of attractive fillings. But that is not all. You also get to add your own self-made touch, fashioned out of icings flavoured with local fruit including orange and passion fruit.
In pursuit of building a business you arrive at a point where you begin to feel a pleasing growth. It is a sensation that drives ambition for expansion. As an incentive to her growing band of customers she began to offer free delivery in Georgetown; and like any shrewd businessperson would do, she began to build on her cupcake base, offering stuffed eggs, cheese straws and other popular and tasty finger foods.
Technology has helped. YouTube and other sites help Malika to engage her clients in order to ensure that their orders are correctly understood. Cupcake designs would be forwarded to her electronically, the sophistication of the technology allowing for such ‘chopping and changing’ as might be required before the end result is delivered. Designing the ‘little things’ to the level of precision demanded by the customers can sometimes be taxing, Malika says.
Focussed on building a reputation for creative excellence in her work, Malika has immersed herself in on-line research into the creative dimension of the making of cupcakes. Part of her focus is on fashioning images that attach her creations to the Guyanese culture, an approach that is as popular with a market that comprises both children and grown-ups.
Not unused to living with challenges, Malika is resolved to fight for the survival and growth of an enterprise that has been as much a therapy as it has been a business venture. By no means a demonstrative character, she appears quietly resolved that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
For Cup Cake orders, Malika can be reached at 216-0987 or 648-0052.
