Catie Morrow of Cakes by Catie in Downtown Conway celebrates her one-year anniversary of being in business on Valentine’s Day.
Before making the switch to full-time baker, Morrow was working at City of Faith, a federal halfway house in Little Rock. Her job was to find employment for ex-felons.
“It was an amazing job. I got to work with great people and make some really cool changes in people’s lives,” she said.
She began baking cakes for her family and friends after becoming interested in the proliferation of television shows about cake making.
“It started out with me watching Food Network and loving the cake shows. I asked my mom if I could do my brother’s birthday cake. That was my first fondant cake. I went to Hobby Lobby, bought a kit, and I had a lot of fun doing it.”
She began making cakes for all her friends’ events and started getting requests. Then, last December, Sommer Holden of SoHo Photography told her the space at Mountebanq Place was available.
“I was like, ‘You’re crazy,’” Morrow said of her first reaction. “I got to thinking about it and crunching numbers. I talked to my boss and she said, ‘You need to do it.’ I came here and checked it out. I fell in love with the space.”
She went to work and worked right up until she opened for business.
“I had support from everybody. It made the transition easy knowing I had support from my coworkers at my old job and here. I knew they weren’t going to let me fail on the first day,” she said.
Holden was a friend and former coworker from another job, and she also knew Ashley Carson of Anything and Everything Design, who is Holden’s sister-in-law and close friend. Morrow said both of them were encouraging about her joining them as a tenant at Mountebanq Place.
Morrow continued, “I knew there would be brides in here, so I would get that exposure, so I knew I would benefit from being in the same place that brides were coming in anyway.”
Morrow has joined Carson and Holden and a few other vendors on Oak Street to form Oak Street Weddings. Together they promote the awareness that brides can find everything they need for their wedding within three blocks on Oak Street.
However, Morrow noted, she makes more birthday cakes and baby shower cakes than wedding cakes.
“With weddings, you have to get a little more established. Birthdays come around more. It’s a big thing to get a wedding. The next thing you know, it’s a baby shower,” she said cheerfully.
The hardest part of her first year of business was learning how long it took to finish the work load she had taken on for any particular day, she said.
“There were a lot of late nights. A lot of nights I was up here till midnight. I didn’t realize how many hours would be put into it. Now I’m figuring out how much time I need to dedicate toward certain things.”
Morrow hopes to gain more walk-in customers who are interested in her fresh-baked cupcakes. She always has a selection in her display case, typically including vanilla, double chocolate, strawberry and red velvet with cream cheese icing. She also has made lemon with raspberry icing in warm weather and holiday spice in cold weather. She has created more custom flavors for people who order ahead.
“Every Wednesday we have half-off cupcakes,” she said. “I don’t have tons of walk-ins, but I’d love for that to change.”
Morrow’s husband, Chris, has been supportive throughout her first year in business, she said.
“He’s been a huge help. He was here doing dishes with me. He’d bring me dinner when I was here working until midnight. He has been gung ho about it for sure. Of course I pay him in cake.”