History
Our business started with one cake. We had a favorite recipe savored by friends and family which were very popular at all family gatherings. One day at work, it was decided to have a “goodie day”, a day to bring in your favorite food to share with your fellow workers. That started the whole thing rolling. My fellow supervisor (we will call him Larry) wanted my lovely wife to duplicate this wonderful cake for him. This led to more cakes being made for other workers as Larry shared his cake around the work place. This was in 1988. Things got crazier the next year as “goodie day” approached requests rolled in from many fellow employees requesting the wonderful Rum Cake my wife made last year. Things progressed to where the at home baker was growing tired of making Rum Cakes for free and so began charging for the ingredients. This didn’t last long (for even charging for ingredients) the Rum Cake orders doubled (that year she made 54 Rum Cakes) the year was 1989.
We knew things had to change, the next year. As “goodie day" approached, the number of orders grew to well over 100. We decided to try our luck at going into business with her SECRET recipe. Our test market was the LADYBUG BAZAAR in Battle Ground, Washington. With the support of our friend (we will call her Madeline) we shared her booth and gave out samples of our delicious Rum Cake. We sold everything we had and took orders for more Rum Cakes. Things went so well that we were Forced Into Business (this was also the name Barbara was thinking for the new business). It was decided to completely revamp our home kitchen into a Department of Agriculture Certified Domestic Bakery/Kitchen. This took time and money. Fortunately though we knew we had a good product, but it didn’t allay the fear of the unknown.
We opened our doors for business in October of 1992. Local television heard of our opening and decided to do a Human-Interest story on New Business’ in the area. We became big news as the story ran at 6:00 in the morning and the orders for Rum Cakes started rolling in at 6:10 a.m. The television station was so overwhelmed with calls they ran the story on the Noon report and on the 6:00 p.m. evening new. We had over 500 orders from October through November of that year. It was also in 1992 we attended our first outside venue for selling our new product (America’s Largest Christmas Bazaar). With the advertising the television news crews gave us (and I shouldn’t forget the Newspapers ran a story too) we sold another 500+ Rum Cakes in just two weeks. This with only one variety of Rum Cake…”Original”.
We are open from October through January. Our list of Rum Cakes include Original Rum Cake; Chocolate Fudge Rum Cake; Cinnamon Rum Raisin Rum Cake; Pumpkin Rum Cake; Lemon Rum Cake, Banana Rum Cake; Pina-Colada, and the Whiskey Cake . We are experimenting with new recipes yearly.
We have expanded into the cyberspace arena with our website: http://www.barbarastoreyrumcakes.com and are looking forward to making more new friends with our future baking endeavors.
Our motto at Barbara Storey’s Rum Cakes is to never take short cuts and to give a quality product, to our customers, each and every time. We look forward to visiting with you at our e-mail: rumcake3@msn.com be sure to write us and let us know what you thought of your cake.
Thank you for choosing Barbara Storey's Rum Cakes
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