“We wanted to have a niche market for ourselves,” Keogh stated.
They determined to cognizance on corporate dessert events and custom corporate items, as well as birthday celebration desserts and custom treats.
The duo commenced with the aid of developing custom cakes (beginning at $75), local presents for small agencies (such as a tasting platter of assorted treats, $37) and custom treats (together with logo cupcakes, $3.50 each).
They observed particular achievement, they said, with hand-held, chew-sized cakes.
Especially the ones made for huge clients.
“We constantly have centered on corporate clients because the market proportion is larger and better,” Keogh stated.
In 2014, they were given considered one of the biggest clients of all: the NFL.
The duo earned the possibility to grow to be the legit VIP dessert caterer for Super Bowl XLVIII at MetLife Stadium.
That occasion modified the course of the enterprise, Keogh stated.
“That is when we virtually took off,” she stated.
Dessert Ladies now specializes in massive-scale dessert bars for corporate and personal customers.
It’s a niche, she stated, that has moved the organization’s backside line, bringing up the consistent 20% annual growth the enterprise has seen given that.
Dessert Ladies’ dessert bars, including themed décor and handcrafted desserts, may be changed, added and displayed anywhere in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, ranging from smaller activities in a person’s domestic to massive corporate occasions at Bryant Park.
“We bake and bring the entirety, in order that, with one phone name, it’s achieved,” Keogh stated. “You don’t ought to get an event planner concerned or have your personnel source anything. We do it all.
“While your group goes about their daily work, we are available in and, from honestly not anything, create big displays full of props, decorations and themed desserts in order that your staff can then come together later to socialise and rejoice milestones, birthdays, promotions and greater.”
Dessert Ladies has worked with corporate clients which includes Mercedes-Benz, Marriott, Goldman Sachs and Century 21 as well as with Prudential in Newark and Springpoint Senior Living in Wall Township.
“They really take body of workers appreciation significantly,” Keogh Smith stated.
The enterprise hosts, on common, huge-scale dessert bars for greater than 300 people in step with week (which can fee anywhere from $5,000 to $7,000) and nearly 10 smaller activities, Keogh said.
“We usually tell humans to give us their price range so we can get returned to them with the pleasant fee,” she said. “There are certain products that are extra high-priced and worried than others, but we’ve ways of blending picks for each budget.”
Dessert Ladies is ready to accomplish all this with just nine personnel.
“Our business enterprise, even though small in numbers, is large in imaginative and prescient and force,” Keogh Smith stated. “What normally takes to 6 different agencies to perform for an occasion, we do it all ourselves.
“Our work ethic is certainly unprecedented — we just can’t let any order exit with out pushing the creative ceiling a bit higher. It’s began to emerge as an dependancy to questioning outside of the container.”
Looking ahead, Keogh and Keogh Smith plan to retain constructing out the dessert bar business, while additionally commencing a manufacturing middle for their Biens Chocolate Centerpieces at the stop of this year.
“We’re going into manufacturing over the summer season now to then start shipping global,” Keogh stated.
Biens Chocolate Centerpieces are chew-sized chocolate cake truffles full of chocolate cake, fudge, brownie and extra, designed as sixty six distinct person centerpieces.
A 30-piece centerpiece costs nearly $46, while a 100-piece centerpiece costs nearly $146.
Keogh stated she believes this new phase of the organisation will push Dessert Ladies to emerge as a $1 million commercial enterprise next yr.
“Our relentless insistence on pinnacle satisfactory components and exquisite centerpieces and desserts are certain to be a huge fulfillment,” Keogh Smith stated.
Educated plan
Geraldine Keogh, co-proprietor of Dessert Ladies in Stirling, stated she became uncovered to Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Small Businesses application at the same time as working for the National Football League in 2014.
“While we didn’t pretty yet suit the standards to use; I stored an eye on it,” she said.
Dessert Ladies become everyday into the 2018 application and even persisted pursuing additional schooling with Rutgers University’s Entrepreneurship Pioneers Initiative and the Small Business Administration’s Emerging Leaders Initiative.
“It opened my eyes to all the things I did no longer yet recognize,” Keogh said.
The applications encouraged members to observe their organizations very seriously to look where they might be capable of scale.
For Dessert Ladies, that was its Biens Chocolate Centerpieces, Keogh said.
“We were selling them personally due to the fact that 2014, however then human beings started out shopping for them through the tray, so we evolved a neighborhood following,” she stated. “Then I got creative one day and determined to set up them with toothpicks on a Styrofoam ball that I had designed to appear like a turkey.
“We bought Toby the Turkey at Thanksgiving and everybody loved him as a desk centerpiece.”
Keogh stated she knew this turned into the location of commercial enterprise she wanted to consciousness on. However, the centerpieces might no longer be capable of be shipped as-is.
“We these days partnered with a enterprise to help us create a structure that might permit us to ship them global and we’ve been checking out the product for the ultimate 8 months now,” she said. “We now have a entire packaging device for these truffle centerpieces, and we’re going to launch them at the give up of this year.”
Accidental entrepreneurs
Geraldine Keough and her daughter, Lindsay Keogh Smith, each stumbled into their roles as co-proprietors of the Dessert Ladies in Stirling.
