Ms. Dean, the owner of Dean's Cake House, owes it all to a Sock-It-To-Me cake! She began working at Delchamp's in Andalusia in 1969 as a cashier. In the early 1980s, when the store changed to United Supermarket, they decided to put in a deli, and moved Ms. Dean up to deli manager.
She and a co-worker decided to try baking cakes, and started with a Sock-It-To-Me cake. The cakes were good, but when they accidentally coated some with doughnut glaze, sales soared! Business really boomed after they tried a chocolate seven layer cake.
Ms. Dean, who is an Andalusia native, began work at a box factory and a pecan plant, and then moved over to Delchamps. After her success with the deli, folks started urging her to start her own business.
In 1994, she did just that. At age 60, when most folks think about retiring, Ms. Dean was beginning a new venture. She opened her doors with four or five employees, most of whom were recruited from family or friends. Today, she has about twenty employees and together, they bake more than 400 seven-layer cakes each day, as well as two-layer cakes, pies, cookies and other goodies.
Her husband Gene, who retired from GTE, was her first driver. Now she has drivers heading in all directions to deliver cakes all over Alabama, as well as outlying areas. In fact, her cakes are now sold as far away as Kenosha, Wisconsin and Ridgeland, Mississippi. Click here for a list of places where Dean's cakes can be purchased.
One of Ms. Dean's workers, Lois, wrote a poem for her as a Christmas gift, stitched and framed it. Ms. Dean has it hanging in the shop. If you'd like to read the poem, click here. Another of the ladies, Pauline Phillips, wrote a poem about the Cake House, and it too, has been framed and hangs in the shop. To read that poem, click here.
Ms. Dean has been featured in such magazines as ALFA's Neighbors magazine, and newspapers like The Birmingham News. To read the story in Neighbors, click here.
If you'd like to see a tour of the Cake House, click here.
