Coffee Cake Guys

A month ago, I worked a booth for Neighbor Serve at the Indy Suburban Home trade show in Westfield, IN. There were hundreds of vendors, mostly focused on home services (gutters, concrete, security systems, etc), and a few outliers. One of those outliers was a company called the Coffee Cake Guys.

One older man sitting at the booth with 1,000 coffee cakes of various flavors stacked high. $21 for 1, $40 for 2, $75 for 4. The second the show started on Friday, the line for coffee cakes piled up. I took the time to introduce myself to the older gentleman working the Coffee Cake Guys booth and he turned out to be the founder/owner of the company. I’ll leave him unnamed as he made it clear he’s a very private man.

I’m fascinated with companies of all shapes & sizes, but especially the hyper-successful ones you never hear about. Here’s the makeup of Coffee Cake Guys:

• 18 full time employees

• 20,000 sq ft bakery in Northern IL

• Team works 240 trade shows per year selling coffee cakes

• Company sells 400,000 coffee cakes per year

• $8m in revenue

The best part is that I asked the owner “how did you get into making coffee cakes?” His response - “my mom.”

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TJ