Kelsie Mellott, who has been baking and designing cakes for weddings and events for eight years, becoming a businesswoman started as a way to pass the time.
“I was just bored,” said Mellott. “I started baking for family and friends, and then orders started coming in.”
Plenty of orders meant plenty of people willing to pay for her pastime, and so the hobby became a business. The stay-at-home mother of three (it was two back then) started what is now Hey Honey Cakery in 2014. Wedding orders followed, then meets with photographers for style shoots, then networking with vendors.
Hey Honey has made a considerable name for itself catering weddings. It has been featured in several wedding-themed blogs and magazines, including Tacari Weddings, Junebug Weddings, Aisle Society and The Carolina Magazine. It also offers designed desserts and specialty orders for corporate events, birthdays and anniversaries.
“Usually with corporate events they’re more prone to choose off of our like standard cupcake menu, or our dessert bar menu,” said Mellott. “We deliver it; we set it up on a nice presentation with cake stands, etc.”
Mellott says that while some flavors prove popular, such as white velvet, dark chocolate or marble, the menu is broad enough to allow clients to mix and match to create their own flavor combinations.
“That is makes their options pretty much endless to where they don’t have to follow a structured menu of a cake filling and frosting,” she said. “Especially for weddings, when we’re having three to five-tier cakes and they’re able to have three different combinations on their wedding cakes, the spectrum just gets even larger.”
Hey Honey frequently hosts personalized cake tastings, booked by clients, in which brides choose up to five flavors of cakes, fillings and frosting. The cake is cut and displayed in bite-sized pieces so that clients can create their own mixtures, from blue velvet with Oreo cookie butter to vanilla Swiss meringue.
“It’s super detailed,” said Mellott. “But we make sure that the client knows they’re able to discuss what flavors they do like and what flavors they don’t like. We make it very comfortable for them so they’re willing to open up and discuss with their family or close friends.”
That freewheeling approach to developing desserts fits the underlying character of Mellott’s enterprise. At Hey Honey’s website, she refers to herself as a “cake artist.” The self-taught cake designer revels in a creative process of experimentation that carries over into her engagement with clients.
“As for the artistry side, getting clients and showing them that they can trust our vision is huge to us,” said Mellott, referring to the process of guiding clients toward considering the rich, myriad options that her creativity makes available to them, turning plain cakes to masterpieces with extra details, colors or even edible lace. “We discuss the theme, the feel and the vibe that they’re wanting their event to put in, and in discussing that with them we’re able to say, “well, this seems like this is going to be up your alley.”
Hey Honey Cakery is located at 229 Fury’s Ferry Rd. Ste. 129. For more information visit its Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/heyhoneycakery, or its website at
https://www.heyhoneycakery.com/.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering education in Columbia County and business-related topics for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
