A baking entrepreneur with her own shop

By Gaye Bunderson

There’s nothing half-baked at Emmeli Mayo’s cake shop.

Mayo came to Boise from Filer in the late ‘90s in pursuit of a degree in musical education. “I play the piano, and I played it well,” Mayo said. But after deciding that a career in music would be “extremely competitive,” she set other career goals for herself and left college after five semesters.

Spurred on by a love of baking, she then became an apprentice at a local French bakery. “I worked there for two years, but it felt like five,” Mayo said. “The food industry is stressful. It’s a demanding job, and you’re on your feet all the time.”

Anyone who’s starting to think that Emmeli Mayo can’t make up her mind about what she wants to do should know that, in fact, the desire to be a baker never left her; and despite twists and turns in pursuit of that goal, she kept on pursuing the dream.

She took other jobs in the food industry and saw them as learning opportunities – both in what to do and what not to do.

At some of those jobs, she’d be put in charge of wholesale accounts – in other words, desserts for restaurants. She explained that she’d make the desserts herself and that a lot of desserts were needed. After she broke out on her own, she continued making desserts and went in search of a commercial kitchen to utilize. She was able to use a commercial kitchen at a former downtown Boise cafe.

Working out of that kitchen, she launched her own business called Sweet Things – a name she now finds amusing. She ran that enterprise from 2001 to 2006 until her first baby was born, a daughter now age 17. She continued working and this is where her notions of “what not to do” were further ingrained.

“I didn’t like the way the [cafe] owner ran his business,” she said. “I wanted my own place.” She quit, and took with her, her newly formed ideas about baking AND running a business. Some of the business and baking skills she takes pride in include:

“I’m frugal – I had that pounded into me as a kid.”

“I pride myself on using whole ingredients – no box recipes.”

She doesn’t overuse sugar and leans more on the European practice of less sugar rather than the American desire for loads of it.

She stopped working for a while and had two more babies, both sons. She still made cakes for friends and family while caring for her children and is able to say that, “For more than 20 years, I’ve developed my own recipes. I put my own spin on things.”

After her youngest son started kindergarten, Mayo decided she’d go back to work outside the home. She and her husband started looking for a place for her to bake, for an independent commercial kitchen. She wasn’t just going to work – she was going to own the business and become a selfemployed entrepreneur.

The Mayos found a building in 2014. Located at 1545 S. Hervey St. in Boise, the three-room structure had previously been home to a number of other businesses, including a trading card shop. Now it was time to turn the building into an independent commercial kitchen, a process that included six months of dealing with the Idaho Health Department and the City of Boise but which ultimately, despite needing to leap many bureaucratic hurdles, became the home of Emmeli’s Cake.

Mayo got a small business loan to convert the area into a commercial kitchen and used some of her own money as well. The loan went toward equipment, permits, and health department fees. Much of the building needed remodeling and a new sink had to be installed to handle waste water with grease in it – a requirement of the City of Boise.

“We had to deal with some new plumbing and electricity, and we also needed ovens, fridges, and storage space,” said Mayo. Her frugality helped stretch the $20,000 loan, but she and her husband also spent an additional $10,000 on all the upgrades.

The city inspectors came in and made sure everything was up to code, and she had to submit all her plans to the Health Department. It took eight months to build the kitchen, but

Emmeli said that, through it all, “I knew once I got started, I’d be okay. I knew what I wanted to make as a product. I wanted to bring my sense of what’s good.”

Originally, she thought she’d easily return to wholesale accounts, but after coming back from childrearing, “The game had changed, as well as the demographics and the valley.” Restaurants now had their own in-house pastry chefs.

She was able to secure an account with an Italian restaurant in Meridian and that carried her through in the beginning. “Then individual cakes fell into place – Facebook was my friend back then, and it was free marketing.”

She makes all kinds of cakes, from birthday cakes to wedding cakes, cakes for any special occasion or just cakes for fun. The kinds of cakes available and the decorations that can go on them may be viewed and ordered at emmeliscake. com. She only takes cake orders via her website.

Regarding her creations, Mayo said: “I care more about the taste of the cake, but some of my customers really care about the outside of the cake, about how it looks. They want really fancy cakes on the outside. Sites like Pinterest and reality shows like ‘Cake Boss’ have changed the game. It’s a lot about presentation, about putting a lot of decoration on the outside of the cake.”

A lot of customers also want vanilla or chocolate cakes –and that’s fine with her – but she has many other choices on her website beyond vanilla or chocolate. She works to communicate with people to be sure of what they want when they request a fancily decorated cake, and she aims to please. Children’s cakes can be especially creative and challenging, with superheroes, robots, and similar things kids enjoy.

Mayo frequently works 12-hour days creating her cakes. She once made a wedding cake for a couple who wanted their special day marked with a pyramid-shaped treat. There were also dessert bushes growing around the dessert pyramid, and Mayo managed to pull the whole thing off. “I actually think of myself as an artist,” said the baker.

Like anything else, cakes can be influenced by current trends. For instance, according to Mayo, big wedding cakes seem to be falling out of favor. Today, couples prefer small

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