When Lynn Magnoli, the unique proprietor of Los Gatos’ iconic Icing on the Cake, introduced she was placing the bakery and its recipes up on the market earlier this yr, clients frightened about its future.
However when Magnoli introduced that it might be taken over by a former worker, Maggie Raye, they rejoiced.
Raye, a house baker, involves the storefront at 50 West Foremost Road — which has been a fixture on the town because it first opened in 1985 — from a nontraditional path to the business, with a resume that touts a bachelor’s diploma in recording arts and credit on a Josh Groban album.
The Bay Space Information Group sat down with Raye to debate her journey to the bakery and her plans for the longer term. This interview has been edited for size and readability.
Q: How did you get into baking?
A: I’ve at all times grown up in a really dessert-heavy, bread-heavy household. It was at all times form of our traditions, holidays particularly. Each birthday, my mom would make us our household’s conventional sunshine cake — which is principally a tackle an angel meals cake, however it has egg yolks in it and it’s slightly extra spongy. So I discovered find out how to make that at an early age. I’ve simply at all times identified that baking makes individuals pleased. I actually don’t know many people who find themselves sad whereas they’re consuming desserts.
Q: What had been you doing earlier than you bought to the Bay Space?
A: Earlier than I got here to Los Gatos, I used to be really working for a report producer in Los Angeles, in a common assistant place, however I did find yourself having manufacturing credit on a few albums. So with my recording arts diploma, I obtained an internship with him, after which he ended up providing a place that I used to be being paid for. However the factor in regards to the music business is it’s very arduous to stability your work life. Having youngsters was at all times a part of my plan, and I knew that that was not going to be the precedence if I stayed within the music enterprise.
Q: What introduced you to Icing on the Cake in 2009?
A: Once I modified profession targets, I used to be simply searching for one thing that was pleasing. Since I grew up in Las Vegas, I knew about Nothing Bundt Truffles and the way they began there and shortly developed right into a franchise. Part of me was playing around with the thought of buying a franchise of some type, however I knew I wished to have the work expertise first. So once I moved in 2009, I turned in functions to your entire Bay Space bakery scene. I walked into Icing on the Cake, and I simply actually felt snug. I actually felt that this was a magical place that actually had a lot to supply this neighborhood, and I used to be actually grateful to be part of that for 5 years. I made a decision to cease working to lift my youngsters, however for 5 years I used to be right here 40 hours per week. A whole lot of the persons are nonetheless right here from once I labored right here, there’s like 14 or 15 those who I knew from earlier than.
Q: What was it that introduced you to come back again to the bakery as an proprietor?
A: [It’s always been] behind my thoughts, the thought of proudly owning a enterprise, proudly owning a bakery. Even once I labored right here I joked round with a few of my mates that labored right here – like, “oh, well, if Lynn ever wants to sell.” I by no means put it on the market to her particularly till I heard in regards to the itemizing by social media. It’s a type of issues the place I made a decision that I wanted change for myself. Being a mother could be very fulfilling and rewarding, however I at all times knew that there was one thing else I wished to do. I feel it’s an excellent lesson to show your youngsters as nicely, that issues can change. My very own mother modified drastically in her 40s, in her profession. So I felt prefer it was a great way to be a constructive [influence] to my women and be like “you are able to do arduous issues, you can also make these previous goals occur.’ I didn’t hand over.
Q: I do know this place is so vital to the neighborhood. What have you ever been listening to from clients ever because you took over?
A: I feel overwhelmingly, it’s been a constructive. They’re very grateful that it’s nonetheless going, grateful that the recipes are persevering with. I simply talked to someone final weekend about how when it first opened on Santa Cruz Avenue, they heard from their mother, “oh, you need to try this bakery, It’s great.” And we’ve been getting it over and time and again. It actually makes your coronary heart pleased to be part of these traditions. I’m not going to say it’s been 100% constructive. There are individuals I really feel like which can be searching for issues which can be altering. However the consistency of the bakery, from what I’ve seen and from what my employees has seen, hasn’t modified. Since we bake all the pieces from scratch, there’s going to be days the place issues don’t prove fairly the identical. It’s all temperature and ingredient-variable. So we’re simply going to should chalk it as much as, you already know, that was an off day. However to say that I’m strolling in right here and altering issues is just not true.
Q: So that you’ve been centered on protecting issues working the way in which clients are used to?
A: Sure, sustaining traditions. I did lengthen the hours an additional hour for individuals commuting to get right here and choose up, and that response has been constructive. I wish to, after the vacation season, look right into a extra technologically superior ordering system. Proper now, all the pieces’s executed by hand. That is our system, and it’s labored for years and years and years, and it’s nice, however I feel that there’s positively a push to go extra on-line. I need to look into it, however I don’t need to rush into it as a result of I don’t need to rock the boat an excessive amount of in my first yr or two.
Q: Have you ever seen any adjustments in what individuals had been ordering if you labored on the bakery earlier than versus now?
A: There’s positively been extra of a push to incorporate extra various choices, which we’re positively open to, creating vegan choices. And it’s a must to be on this neighborhood the place there are such a lot of dietary restrictions. We don’t have a separate facility to bake gluten-free choices, so we ensure that to let individuals know that all the pieces’s wheat free so there might be a cross contamination facet, however we do our greatest attempting to get all kinds of issues for all kinds of consumers.
Q: What’s your favourite merchandise that Icing on the Cake sells?
A: I might say the pumpkin pumpkin pie bar. I used to have a factor with one in every of my coworkers — we’d discover the right one, and that was the one which we’d have on our lunch break. I like the thought you could have a pumpkin pie in the midst of this season and also you don’t should order a complete pie. [That’s] extra of a seasonal factor. I’d say the year-round enjoyment for me is named a vanilla large high cookie. It form of jogs my memory of these comfortable vanilla cookies you used to purchase after faculty, at 7/11 or one thing like that. But it surely’s higher than that, it’s so significantly better. It’s a comfortable, cake-like cookie.
Profile
Identify: Maggie Raye
Place: Proprietor and president, Icing on the Cake, inc.
Schooling: Bachelor of Arts in recording arts from Loyola Marymount College
Hometown: Las Vegas
Residence: San Jose
Age: 41
5 issues to find out about Maggie Raye:
- Raye bakes sourdough at dwelling for enjoyable, and repeatedly provides loaves away on Instagram. (Comply with her @rayeofsunshinesourdough).
- She has producer credit on albums by Andrea Bocelli and Josh Groban.
- She loves Broadway exhibits and is a longtime theater child.
- In one other life, Raye used to work in tractor gross sales.
- She likes to dye her hair funky colours.
