Aliyyah Baylor is all smiles within the kitchen, the place she says every considered one of her ovens and mixers maintain a particular place.
“This one goes to be miss outdated dependable,” Baylor, proprietor of Make My Cake NYC stated, laughing about all of the recollections she has utilizing one explicit mixer for years.
Meals is the Baylor household’s enterprise. Her grandmother Josephine Smith ran a catering enterprise, Josephine’s Catering, out of her Harlem condo. Then Aliyyah’s mom, Joann, ran a cake-baking enterprise out of her house. Aliyyah adopted their lead changing into the third technology with a enterprise presence in Harlem. She’s now in enterprise along with her Mother.
What You Want To Know
- The Baylor household has served the Harlem group and metropolis as an entire for 3 generations
- Aliyyah Baylor says as a Black-owned enterprise, she’s skilled issue at first of her profession getting a financial institution mortgage
- Aliyyah and her mom Joann Baylor opened the bakery, Make My Cake NYC, 25 years in the past and now have two areas
- One other bakery location is ready to open on one hundred and twenty fifth Road in March
“My mother was my first boss,” Aliyyah stated. “She was at all times behind me, pushing me.”
“To been in a position to categorical the sentiments I had rising up baking with my mom and my daughter and sharing it with the general public is admittedly vital,” stated Joann, proprietor of Make My Cake NYC.
Aliyyah and her mom opened the bakery 25 years in the past. They now have two areas at 139th Road and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard in Harlem, and on Columbus Avenue on the Higher West Aspect.
However attending to the place they’re now wasn’t straightforward. Aliyyah says Black-owned companies can face particular obstacles. One instance was the problem in getting a mortgage to finance her first bakery.
”As a person of coloration, as a younger entrepreneur, I launched into in search of financing on the age of 24, 25 once we began in search of a brick and mortar and did not initially have a look at it as a street block for me being a girl, Black. You do not suppose like that since you are believing in your product,” Aliyyah stated.
Pictured: Aliyyah Baylor, proprietor of Make My Cake NYC.
She finally received that financing, however is now wrestling with a unique problem, the coronavirus.
Her store in Harlem also referred to as the Ma Smith’s Dessert Cafe has remained open by means of the pandemic due to prospects ordering desserts whereas quarantining. Now, she and her mother plan to increase with a store on one hundred and twenty fifth Road.
“The purchasers have been nonetheless calling, they have been nonetheless saying we have been important,” Aliyyah stated.
Aliyyah stated she is eternally grateful to her mentors for serving to her develop as an entrepreneur and she or he hopes to encourage and pay it ahead to different enterprise house owners.
“My mother was that one who guided me. Immediately you want a boardroom to get you to that subsequent step and I hope I play a job in some entrepreneur’s life,” Aliyyah stated.
“I work with three of my children, so hats off to me,” Joann stated, as the 2 of them began cracking up. Joann additionally works along with her two sons, Dedan and Kevin, on the 139th Road location.
