CHERISSE MOE

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

At 6.30 am, Jor­dan Lamy is al­ready up and prepar­ing for an­oth­er day of bak­ing while tack­ling cus­tom or­ders.

By 11 am, pa­trons are greet­ed by rows of fresh treats at her busi­ness, In­dulge Desserts, at 140 Mis­sion Road, Freeport.

Feel­ing for some­thing sweet?

There are spe­cial­ty cup­cakes, brown­ies, cake slices, cook­ies, mac­arons, choco­late mousse, tri­fles, tiramisu, crème caramel and cheese­cakes, avail­able by the slice or in egg­less dessert cups.

For those crav­ing some­thing savoury, there are puffs, but­tery crois­sants, quiche and sand­wich­es, with mi­ni piz­zas com­ing soon.

At 27, Lamy has turned a child­hood pas­sion in­to a grow­ing busi­ness and, in the process, re­alised a dream she has car­ried for years.

A child­hood spent

in the kitchen

Much of Lamy’s child­hood re­volved around her grand­moth­er’s KCK Ka­ter­ing com­pa­ny.

Whether her grand­moth­er was teach­ing a YTEPP class or prepar­ing meals for a wed­ding, birth­day cel­e­bra­tion or oth­er spe­cial event, Lamy was nev­er far away.

Some of her ear­li­est mem­o­ries were made in that kitchen.

At four, she be­lieved she was help­ing to pre­pare Sun­day lunch by crush­ing eggshells in­to a bowl and sea­son­ing them with salt, black pep­per and what­ev­er else she could find.

It is a core mem­o­ry that still brings laugh­ter.

She al­so re­mem­bers hap­pi­ly sam­pling fried fish, drink­ing evap­o­rat­ed milk straight from the car­ton, eat­ing ic­ing from a mix­ing bowl and dip­ping her fin­ger in­to fresh cake bat­ter when­ev­er no one was look­ing, “or even while some­one was look­ing,” she jokes.

It is easy to see how the jour­ney from own­ing a toy kitchen, which she called her first restau­rant, where she served imag­i­nary meals, to launch­ing In­dulge Desserts be­came such a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion.

“I al­ways knew I want­ed to own my own busi­ness,” she says.

Mak­ing moves

The St Joseph’s Con­vent alum­na was so de­ter­mined to pur­sue that dream that she skipped CAPE and en­rolled at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute (TTHTI), where she pur­sued an As­so­ciate De­gree in Culi­nary Man­age­ment.

Co­in­ci­den­tal­ly, she was part of the in­sti­tute’s fi­nal grad­u­at­ing class.

Al­though she en­tered with an ini­tial in­ter­est in culi­nary arts, bak­ing grad­u­al­ly be­came her fo­cus.

She cred­its much of that change to lec­tur­er Ver­giss Love­less, her favourite teacher, who was known for keep­ing his stu­dents on their toes.

Ar­riv­ing late was not an op­tion. Walk­ing in­to a 7 am the­o­ry class at 7.02 meant stay­ing out­side.

Skip­ping the­o­ry al­so meant miss­ing the les­son ex­plain­ing what the class would bake that day.

“His class­room changed the course of my life. He sparked a love for bak­ing that even­tu­al­ly grew in­to the ca­reer I have to­day,” she says.

She al­so cred­its Sim­mone Ed­win, who taught Bak­ing II, with in­tro­duc­ing her to the art and sci­ence of the craft.

Lamy would rush home ex­cit­ed to recre­ate what she had learned at school.

Cin­na­mon rolls, cook­ies, brown­ies and white choco­late par­faits soon be­came reg­u­lar projects, and she be­came es­pe­cial­ly fas­ci­nat­ed by mak­ing caramel.

“My friends used to laugh and say I could drink it by the bot­tle,” she says.

Her fi­nal-year in­tern­ship at lo­cal bak­ery Dolce Desserts con­firmed her call­ing.

While many of her class­mates chose place­ments abroad, Lamy want­ed to fo­cus on mas­ter­ing bak­ing with­out hav­ing to ad­just to an un­fa­mil­iar coun­try, much to her moth­er’s dis­ap­point­ment, as she had hoped her daugh­ter would go to France.

A dream comes true

In­dulge Cup­cakes was born on a Thurs­day af­ter­noon in 2017 while Lamy was lim­ing af­ter school with her friend Ja­van.

The idea was sim­ple: sell cup­cakes as a side hus­tle to make some ex­tra mon­ey.

She spent hours brain­storm­ing names and sketch­ing out a ba­sic busi­ness plan with Ja­van and her then-boyfriend, Jameel.

Be­fore long, Ja­van placed the first or­der, 12 red vel­vet, 12 eggnog and 12 choco­late mint cup­cakes.

“My favourite part of that sto­ry is that his moth­er ab­solute­ly fell in love with the choco­late mint cup­cakes. Nine years lat­er, she still calls every now and then to or­der a few. There’s some­thing in­cred­i­bly spe­cial about know­ing that the very first cus­tomers are still sup­port­ing me,” says Lamy.

To­day, among her best sell­ers are car­rot cake and ap­ple crum­ble cheese­cake slices.

But the busi­ness might not have de­vel­oped in­to what it is to­day with­out some tough love from her moth­er.

Lamy said her moth­er stern­ly told her to stop treat­ing her pas­sion like an on­line side hus­tle and start run­ning it like a re­al busi­ness.

That ad­vice helped pro­pel In­dulge Desserts in­to what it is to­day, a thriv­ing dessert brand with a store­front of its own.

Though she has over­come “a mil­lion and five chal­lenges”, Lamy will cel­e­brate one year of suc­cess at the store­front on Oc­to­ber 17.

“A mile­stone that once felt im­pos­si­ble now serves as a dai­ly re­minder of how far one con­ver­sa­tion, one cus­tomer, and one leap of faith can take you.”

In her own lane

Her ded­i­ca­tion ap­pears to be pay­ing off.

Or­ders have near­ly tripled this year, dri­ven by loy­al cus­tomers, com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers stop­ping by dur­ing their lunch breaks, first-time vis­i­tors and spon­ta­neous drop-ins.

Some of Lamy’s fond­est mo­ments, how­ev­er, have come through the re­la­tion­ships she has built with cus­tomers.

Re­cent­ly, a moth­er bought a cup­cake with a “Hap­py Birth­day” top­per and can­dle, a cheese­cake slice and a brown­ie for her daugh­ter.

The fol­low­ing day, the daugh­ter came in and re­vealed that she was al­ready a reg­u­lar cus­tomer.

Days lat­er, the fa­ther vis­it­ed to praise the ap­ple crum­ble cheese­cake slice.

“It made me re­alise how con­nect­ed peo­ple are and how desserts be­come part of their cel­e­bra­tions,” she en­thus­es.

So what sets In­dulge Desserts apart in an in­creas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive mar­ket?

For Lamy, it comes down to pas­sion, qual­i­ty in­gre­di­ents and per­son­al ser­vice.

“As the sole per­son re­spon­si­ble for the ma­jor­i­ty of op­er­a­tions, I am able to build gen­uine re­la­tion­ships with the peo­ple who sup­port my busi­ness. Cus­tomers are not just names on an or­der list; I get to know their pref­er­ences and the sto­ries be­hind the desserts they re­quest. Be­ing per­son­al­ly in­volved al­lows me to cre­ate a more mean­ing­ful ex­pe­ri­ence where they feel seen, val­ued, and ap­pre­ci­at­ed.”

For Lamy, every dessert car­ries a lit­tle piece of the jour­ney that be­gan in her grand­moth­er’s kitchen.

What start­ed with imag­i­nary meals in a toy kitchen has grown in­to a re­al restau­rant dream, one cup­cake, cheese­cake and cus­tomer at a time.