By Stephanie Burt
Images by Caroline’s Muffins, Erin Adams, and Laura Fritz
Caroline’s Muffins, a cake bakery primarily based in Spartanburg, South Carolina, celebrates its enlargement from mail-order cake enterprise to a spectacular new storefront that welcomes visitors to take a seat and keep awhile.
A new yellow- and white-striped awning greets guests to the cake café at Caroline’s Muffins in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Whereas the primarily mail-order cake enterprise has typically been a bustling hive of exercise on Beaumont Avenue, in 2022, it turned a real group hub when it started welcoming guests inside its new retail area, the place visitors can pattern cake and sip wine or espresso.
There are particulars tucked into each nook of the lately refurbished constructing, from a set of cake stands on the entrance to lighting fixtures specifically designed to resemble whisks, however there’s one element above all that signifies the true nature of this nationally revered cake enterprise: a neon signal outdoors CEO Richard Reutter’s workplace that merely reads “Caroline” in cursive yellow neon.
“That’s Caroline’s signature, and we had been capable of recreate it from her personal handwriting,” says Richard, nearly however not fairly touching the glowing signal as he gestures. Regardless of her bodily absence—founder Caroline Ragsdale Reutter handed away in 2017—her signature touches are nonetheless very a lot part of this enterprise in reminiscence and on a regular basis follow, and Richard, her son, is honoring her legacy with each swirl of caramel icing atop a seven-layer cake. For Richard, mail-order clients, staff, and visitors to the café are all a part of what he considers the “cake group.”
“You’ll be able to’t actually separate Richard from Caroline’s Muffins, and those that know me know that,” he says. In any case, his mom served her first caramel cake at his christening in 1982, and shortly, associates and neighbors had been clamoring for that cake, a decadent model of an already-decadent Southern traditional with seven tender yellow cake layers separated and coated by a clean, wealthy caramel icing that requires a masterful hand to good.
For Caroline, a Lake Metropolis, South Carolina, native, the concept of a private connection to group by cake got here naturally. Within the very early days, she’d serve associates and neighbors by inserting a cake on a joggling board on the entrance porch of her residence in Annapolis, Maryland, a pink tin beside it for fee. She knew all of the names of her clients, however because the enterprise blossomed with phrase of mouth, she started to make use of all of the burners on her range for pots of effervescent caramel when it was time to bake, and there have been loads of folks she didn’t know ordering from as distant as Hawaii. So, she started enlisting baking assist from one other baker she knew in South Carolina to assist fill the orders after which finally opened a retail storefront in Annapolis that additionally shipped nationwide.
In 2012, the enterprise relocated to Spartanburg and centered on mail order, that very same signature pink tin packaging not solely holding the unique caramel cake but additionally a rising variety of different confectionary classics, from pink velvet to coconut, though caramel did (and nonetheless does) outsell all of them. Greater than 2,500 truffles per week are shipped out in the course of the busy vacation season as of late, and thru all of it, private relationships with clients nonetheless anchor the enterprise as they all the time have.
“Our communication with our clients is our basis and robust construction,” Richard says. Whereas many shoppers e-mail or order on-line, Caroline’s Muffins nonetheless has a telephone financial institution of customer support specialists so those that want to can name of their orders. There are all the time a number of manning the telephone year-round, however in the course of the holidays, that quantity swells to fifteen, and so they all have strict directions to keep away from dashing clients. There aren’t any quotas to satisfy for orders taken or goal size of a name to hit however, as an alternative, an emphasis on private service and feeling taken care of. “We share our story with them, they know us, and we get to take a particular place on their tables, so they’re part of that story, too,” Richard says. And at Caroline’s Muffins, that even contains including new flavors.
Caroline’s in depth cookbook assortment—many along with her handwritten notations and flags nonetheless included—are housed within the bakery, and Richard typically browses by them for inventive inspiration. Nonetheless, “typically, clients inform us what they’d prefer to see added to the road,” Richard says. “We’ve earned their respect as a result of we do protect these recipes and hold them alive, and so they belief us to bake a cake that tastes just like the one they keep in mind.”
Retaining the integrity of the recipes is usually a problem for bakeries at a excessive manufacturing degree comparable to Caroline’s Muffins, however this bakery has not modified the time-tested recipes from residence cooks, simply scaled them. The caramel continues to be made by hand, the scent of butter and sugar wafting out of very massive copper pots however nonetheless as clean as when Caroline made it in her residence kitchen. There’s a crew of professional cake icers, their arms deftly twirling truffles on stands for a wonderfully clean cake floor with a signature swirl prime. And every order continues to be packed by hand, a customized piece of apparatus guaranteeing that even the cellophane is centered within the tin for every buyer. The walk-in coolers could also be larger, with a bakery that now features a delivery room with a conveyor belt for bins which can be loaded immediately onto a truck, however the consideration to scrumptious element continues to be a Caroline’s Muffins signature.
Most busy days will discover Richard in some unspecified time in the future alongside that conveyor belt, appearing as a “chef expo” on the road, as he says, double-checking orders, making remaining changes, and usually conserving the thread of their cake group robust from Spartanburg to the broader world. Steps away, clients enter the café and infrequently exclaim, “Doesn’t it odor good in right here!”
The scent of caramelizing sugar permeates all of the corners of this constructing, which as soon as, way back, housed a printing firm. There are marble café tables anchored by a vivid yellow banquette, darkish inexperienced accents, and, in fact, the star of the present, a gleaming case of cake inviting every customer to remain and pattern one thing candy.
“We actually needed to get again to that chance to attach with our clients face-to-face by inviting them into our bakery with this area,” Richard says. “To say that seeing this come to life on this method has exceeded my expectations is an understatement. I’m actually excited in regards to the alternatives that that is going to supply us on the subject of connecting to our area people, from pop-up brunches to sip-and-shops, and it’s a method to let of us who may not know us in on the Caroline’s secret.”
The key is certainly out about this South Carolina bakery, and that’s a candy trigger for celebration, one most positively commemorated with a cake—or two—on the desk.
We’re excited to announce a scrumptious collaboration between Caroline’s Muffins, our editor-in-chief Brian Hart Hoffman, and Bake from Scratch!
“Y’all know I really like hummingbird cake in any and all kinds, which is why I’m so excited to announce that I’ve partnered with Caroline’s Muffins to create a nut-free 4-Layer Hummingbird Cake, primarily based on my favourite model of hummingbird cake, that’s obtainable now for nationwide delivery! Caroline’s is a longtime buddy of Bake from Scratch, and I had a blast working with them.” —Brian Hart Hoffman
Go to carolinescakes.com to order your hummingbird cake.
