Sunny Days Bakery
Founder: Rachel Blanks
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2200 Keith Street, Tallahassee, FL 32310 • sunnydaysllc@gmail.com • (850) 270-8SUN
To read a Q&A with Sunny Days Bakery’s Rachel Blanks, click here.
Sunny Days Bakery is a “designer cupcakes” and baked-goods emporium offering a full line of treats to customers throughout Tallahassee. One of its biggest customer bases? Out-of-state parents who want goodies delivered to their kids at one of Tallahassee’s many college campuses. And, of course, those students themselves.
HOW MENTORING WILL HELP: “The mentoring from 100 Urban Entrepreneurs’ professional network is a gift itself,” Blanks says. “The main benefit I expect from the mentoring program is the industry analysts, consultants and good networking contacts who can share their knowledge with me. These mentors have much more entrepreneurial experience than I do, and they’ll serve as trusted confidants.”
HOW $10,000 WILL HELP: Sunny Days is currently online-only; the startup financing will help Blanks begin to look for a storefront. It’ll also help defray the cost of insurance, licensing and basic supplies, as well as add a shopping-cart feature to the Web site and pay for some Google AdWords initiatives.
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WHO DOESN’T LOVE a cupcake? Just about no one — and Rachel Blanks, the founder of Sunny Days Bakery, can spot a wide-open market when she sees one. “Our ideal customer,” she jokes, “is a paying customer.”
There are likely plenty of those in Tallahassee; the area’s high concentration of students means a double-dip business opportunity when it comes to gourmet baked goods like the ones Blanks offers. Her customer base is made up not only of those students, but also their out-of-state parents, who want to deliver a little home-baked love to their far-flung kids. (Also those who are extremely meticulous about what they put in their mouth — Sunny Days offers a full line of vegan baked goods as well.)
Blanks, 26, first got interested in running a bakery during her sophomore year in college, “when friends and church members would ask me to bake cobblers, pies, cakes and cookies for them on a regular basis,” she says. “During my business training, I learned something that changed my way of thinking: ‘When you do what you love, you never work a day in your life.’ I realized I wanted to do it professionally.”
Perhaps the biggest boost to her business is Blanks’s husband, Michael, who recently got involved with Sunny Days’ daily operations. He “handles the deliveries and Web site orders, and also works with frosting the cakes,” Blanks says. Sounds like a sweet partnership — and a promising business model to expand within Tallahassee and beyond. •
