Layers of Wonder: Caroline’s Cakes
By Stephanie Burt
Photography by Caroline’s Cakes, Erin Adams, and Laura Fritz
Caroline’s Cakes, a cake bakery based in Spartanburg, South Carolina, celebrates its expansion from mail-order cake business to a spectacular new storefront that welcomes guests to sit and stay awhile.
A new yellow- and white-striped awning greets visitors to the cake café at Caroline’s Cakes in Spartanburg, South Carolina. While the mainly mail-order cake business has often been a bustling hive of activity on Beaumont Street, in 2022, it became a true community hub when it began welcoming visitors inside its new retail space, where guests can sample cake and sip wine or coffee.
There are details tucked into every corner of the recently refurbished building, from a collection of cake stands at the entrance to light fixtures specially designed to resemble whisks, but there’s one detail above all that signifies the true nature of this nationally revered cake business: a neon sign outside CEO Richard Reutter’s office that simply reads “Caroline” in cursive yellow neon.
“That’s Caroline’s signature, and we were able to recreate it from her own handwriting,” says Richard, almost but not quite touching the glowing sign as he gestures. Despite her physical absence—founder Caroline Ragsdale Reutter passed away in 2017—her signature touches are still very much a part of this business in memory and everyday practice, and Richard, her son, is honoring her legacy with every swirl of caramel icing atop a seven-layer cake. For Richard, mail-order customers, employees, and guests to the café are all part of what he considers the “cake community.”
“You can’t really separate Richard from Caroline’s Cakes, and those who know me know that,” he says. After all, his mother served her first caramel cake at his christening in 1982, and soon, friends and neighbors were clamoring for that cake, a decadent version of an already-decadent Southern classic with seven tender yellow cake layers separated and covered by a smooth, rich caramel icing that requires a masterful hand to perfect.
For Caroline, a Lake City, South Carolina, native, the idea of a personal connection to community through cake came naturally. In the very early days, she’d serve friends and neighbors by placing a cake on a joggling board on the front porch of her home in Annapolis, Maryland, a red tin beside it for payment. She knew all the names of her customers, but as the business blossomed with word of mouth, she began to use all the burners on her stove for pots of bubbling caramel when it was time to bake, and there were plenty of people she didn’t know ordering from as far away as Hawaii. So, she began enlisting baking help from another baker she knew in South Carolina to help fill the orders and then eventually opened a retail storefront in Annapolis that also shipped nationwide.
In 2012, the business relocated to Spartanburg and focused on mail order, that same signature red tin packaging now not only holding the original caramel cake but also a growing number of other confectionary classics, from red velvet to coconut, although caramel did (and still does) outsell them all. More than 2,500 cakes per week are shipped out during the busy holiday season these days, and through it all, personal relationships with customers still anchor the business as they always have.
“Our communication with our customers is our foundation and strong structure,” Richard says. While many customers email or order online, Caroline’s Cakes still has a phone bank of customer service specialists so those who wish to can call in their orders. There are always a few manning the phone year-round, but during the holidays, that number swells to 15, and they all have strict instructions to avoid rushing customers. There are no quotas to meet for orders taken or target length of a call to hit but, instead, an emphasis on personal service and feeling taken care of. “We share our story with them, they know us, and we get to take a special place on their tables, so they are a part of that story, too,” Richard says. And at Caroline’s Cakes, that even includes adding new flavors.
Caroline’s extensive cookbook collection—many with her handwritten notations and flags still included—are housed in the bakery, and Richard often browses through them for creative inspiration. However, “often, customers tell us what they’d like to see added to the line,” Richard says. “We’ve earned their respect because we do preserve these recipes and keep them alive, and they trust us to bake a cake that tastes like the one they remember.”
Keeping the integrity of the recipes is often a challenge for bakeries at a high production level such as Caroline’s Cakes, but this bakery has not changed the time-tested recipes from home cooks, just scaled them. The caramel is still made by hand, the scent of butter and sugar wafting out of very large copper pots but still as smooth as when Caroline made it in her home kitchen. There is a team of expert cake icers, their hands deftly twirling cakes on stands for a perfectly smooth cake surface with a signature swirl top. And each order is still packed by hand, a custom piece of equipment ensuring that even the cellophane is centered in the tin for each customer. The walk-in coolers may be bigger, with a bakery that now includes a shipping room with a conveyor belt for boxes that are loaded directly onto a truck, but the attention to delicious detail is still a Caroline’s Cakes signature.
Most busy days will find Richard at some point along that conveyor belt, acting as a “chef expo” on the line, as he says, double-checking orders, making final adjustments, and generally keeping the thread of their cake community strong from Spartanburg to the wider world. Steps away, customers enter the café and often exclaim, “Doesn’t it smell good in here!”
The scent of caramelizing sugar permeates all the corners of this building, which once, long ago, housed a printing company. There are marble café tables anchored by a bright yellow banquette, dark green accents, and, of course, the star of the show, a gleaming case of cake inviting each visitor to stay and sample something sweet.
“We really wanted to get back to that opportunity to connect with our customers face-to-face by inviting them into our bakery with this space,” Richard says. “To say that seeing this come to life in this way has exceeded my expectations is an understatement. I’m really excited about the opportunities that this is going to offer us when it comes to connecting to our local community, from pop-up brunches to sip-and-shops, and it’s a way to let folks who might not know us in on the Caroline’s secret.”
The secret is definitely out about this South Carolina bakery, and that’s a sweet cause for celebration, one most definitely commemorated with a cake—or two—on the table.
We are excited to announce a delicious collaboration between Caroline’s Cakes, our editor-in-chief Brian Hart Hoffman, and Bake from Scratch!
“Y’all know I love hummingbird cake in any and all forms, which is why I’m so excited to announce that I’ve partnered with Caroline’s Cakes to create a nut-free Four-Layer Hummingbird Cake, based on my favorite version of hummingbird cake, that’s available now for nationwide shipping! Caroline’s is a longtime friend of Bake from Scratch, and I had a blast working with them.” —Brian Hart Hoffman
Visit carolinescakes.com to order your hummingbird cake.
The post Layers of Wonder:
Caroline’s Cakes first appeared on Bake from Scratch.