When Kimberly Michaca started her own business, Kimmy’s Cakes & Delicacies three years ago, she was baking a couple of cakes each month. For the last year and a half, she has been consistently baking “more than a dozen cakes every week.”
Michaca quit her job of five years around two months ago and took the leap to fulltime with Kimmy’s Cakes & Delicacies. She has always enjoyed baking, but it wasn’t until high school when she began to consistently share her bakes with others.
“My birthday is two days after Christmas, so I just always felt like my birthday was a little bit of an afterthought,” she said. “There wasn’t even school during my birthday so I never felt special. I always made it my mission to make my friends’ birthday special. If there was school and I could bake for them, I would.”
Initially, it was friends and family reaching out with cake requests for their special occasions. Word of mouth and regular clients helped her get to where she is today, she says, and feels lucky that she is busy enough to maintain baking as her fulltime job.
“There is so much going on all the time, and people don’t realize all the things that are happening,” she said. “Birthdays, events, celebrations — I just love being able to see this whole other part of Anchorage that I wouldn’t have ever realized there was if I didn’t start this small business.”
Michaca says through her work, she’s been able to network with other women business owners in town. She recently launched a mobile cake bar, a new service for clients.
“I have gotten to interact with other party planners, being part of their process of making their dessert tables or having their cakes done through me,” she said. “There are a lot of amazing party planners, event planners, florists, venue owners, estheticians, hair salons owners that I have gotten to be part of their special celebrations.”
She says she would not have been able to grow this much without the help of her family.
“They are pretty much behind the scenes of everything,” Michaca said. “My sister does all my social media stuff and my calendar. My husband does pretty much all the cleaning and mixing for me, so it really is like a family operation. There is a whole team behind the scenes that people don’t really get to see.”
Sam Davenport is a writer residing in Anchorage. She's a leo and a plant-person, and loves spending quality time with her dog, Aspen. She is a Real Housewives fan and has been called a Bravo historian.
