Sweet Dough Cafe's New Store

WHO WE ARE

I'm Lakiesha Hohl and together with my husband Louis, we form the husband and wife team behind Sweet Dough Café, a small family bakery and kids baking class center. For the past year we’ve operated out of a small shared commercial kitchen in the city of Upland, CA and despite not having our own location, we’ve managed to cultivate one of the world’s most unique bakeries. We started an all gourmet cinnamon roll bakery and together we've created over 80 different cinna-roll flavors, cinnamon roll breakfast sandwiches and other cinnamon roll based desserts.


I've dedicated my life to helping children - with a special focus on children with developmental disabilities. I earned my Master's Degree in Psychology and have spent the last 4 years as an ABA Therapist and Supervisor developing programs to help autistic children and their parents. My love for children has made our kids baking classes an integral part of who we are. I believe that children should be able to explore their talents and passions in encouraging environments.

Louis, my husband (the baker), has been in the sales and customer service industry for over 14 years, but has been cooking and baking for over 25 years. Inside of him is a strong passion for cooking and baking home-made goods and dishes that remind him of his two grandmothers. He loves making people happy through great food and using his passion to connect with people from all walks of life. 


HOW WE STARTED

We’ve always dreamed of creating a family business and decided to put both of our talents to good use. So when the opportunity presented itself a year ago, we swallowed our fears and applied to become a vendor at the Upland Lemon Festival selling different flavored cinnamon rolls to a packed out venue. We were worried that because our idea was so different, people would be afraid to give it a try. That was the first time Louis ever sold one of his creations, so he was definitely worried about how people would respond! Forunately, the unique idea paid off big time. Lakiesha’s decorating earned us an award for one of the best decorated booths at the fair and the flavored Cinna-Rolls were so good, we managed to build a fan base that's followed us all the way to the shared commercial kitchen we are in now.




WHAT'S NEXT?

The next step in our evolution is to move into our own retail space at the Victoria Gardens Mall in our hometown of Rancho Cucamonga. We want to represent Rancho in a major way so we’ve partnered up with our Organic coffee provider, Coast 2 Coast Roasters, and are planning to become the world’s first Gourmet Cinnamon Roll and Coffee House Bakery offering the most unique variety of Gourmet Cinnamon Rolls, Savory Rolls, Cinna-Roll Sandwiches and assortments of coffee house beverages. We’ll also have a separate venue in Rancho Cucamonga where we will hold all of our Baking Classes and will pair up with VG Kids to offer special goodies for the Victoria Gardens youth.

OUR PURPOSE

We want Sweet Dough Café to be your bakery; your place to come and pick up Cinna-Rolls for a birthday or for co-workers, your place to grab a righteous macchiato at the mall, and the place you tell all your friends and family about. We want to help put Rancho Cucamonga and all of the Inland Empire on the map as a true foodie destination. We have a deep passion for teaching and helping our youth and want your children to have a place to explore their culinary passions and love of baking. Sweet Dough will also strive to set a good example for our kids, our friends and our family, by proving to them that hard work, faith in God, intense focus and unmovable passion are what help you achieve your dreams. We want this more than anything and know that Sweet Dough Café can and will be all of these things and much more.

OUR BAKED GOODS

We decided to build on an old family recipe that we used to make Cinnamon Rolls for our family every Christmas. We knew that cinnamon rolls have been done already, but different flavored cinnamon rolls were relatively uncharted territory and figured this was our best chance at setting ourselves apart from other bakeries.

We use 3 different spices, 3 different extracts and a special blend of sugars and Korintje Cinnamon to create our Sweet Dough Cinna-Roll base. The dough is mixed and allowed to ferment for over 24 hours to develop flavor and then rolled and proofed again before baking to a warm, soft and gooey perfection. We then top them off with all sorts of wonderfully sweet creations like our Coffee Cream cheese frosting and Pink Himalayan sea salted caramel sauce.

All of our cream cheese frostings, sauces, compotes, caramels and glazes are made in house from scratch because we believe in quality and know that it makes a world of a difference. We want our rolls to be the best Cinnamon Rolls you’ve ever had and go to great lengths to make that happen.


OUR NEEDS

We are completely self-funded, and over the course of a year have used up our life savings getting the business up and running which means we are in need of monetary assistance in order to make this move successful. Since we’ve been renting kitchen equipment for the past year, we will need to purchase ALL of our own equipment for our new location.


Inside the bakery, we need:

2 x Commercial Convection Ovens
2 x 20Qt Planetary Mixers
1 x Insulated Bread Proofer
3 x Cooling Racks with covers
10 x stainless steel Texas Muffin Cup baking trays
1 x Combination Convection Oven and Range with Flat Top griddle
1 x Fryer
1 x Stainless Steel Prep Table
1 x Metal Racks for Dry Storage
1 x Hot Holding prep table
1 x Cold Holding prep table
1 x Commercial Microwave
Various cleaning and maintenance supplies like towels, mops, brooms etc.
First months baking materials and payroll

Outside the bakery, we need:

A small facelift to spruce up the appearance
Digital Menus
New countertops
Mall Signage

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Every cent donated will go towards what is listed here to help bring our small family dream to life. You will be a part of something so monumental for our family that our lives will forever be changed. You all have become a part of our family and are constantly pushing us to be better and more innovative. We look forward to serving you all the best and most decadent Cinnamon Rolls the world has ever seen.

We love you all so much and thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

- The Hohl family