Search
Donate

Search
Donate

April Anderson

Website

Good Cakes and Bakes

 

What is Good Cakes and Bakes?

Good Cakes and Bakes is an organic, all-natural bakery that offers high quality baked goods (vegan-friendly), to customers in our community-oriented space on Livernois. We host community events regularly and partner with local vendors including EliTea, Goodpeople Popcorn, Fresh Corner Café, and Detroit Pop Shop.

What was your experience in Build Institute?

I took Build in January 2013. I studied pastry arts at MCC and also have an MBA in corporate accounting, but Build was an important step for me in honing my business plan.

Carmel Chocolate Cupcake

Caramel Chocolate Cupcake

Taking the class really helped me learn how to market my business to others and provided me with a supportive environment to receive feedback. Learning how to describe my business succinctly and ensure my mission and passion came across in the marketing was an invaluable part of the learning process.

“Taking the class really helped me learn how to market my business to others.”

What are your most recent developments?

My bakery is open Tues – Sat at 19363 Livernois. I opened during last year’s Detroit Design Festival as part of the Light Up Livernois event. Revolve Detroit was instrumental in helping me get the space and obtain a grant for build-out. It was a rollercoaster experience but the response has been wonderful. We’re participating in Third Thursdays on Livernois, which has been a really exciting event for the community. We host weekly pop-ups with Chef Jim Renburg who makes gourmet paninis and we’re also beginning to offer Sunday brunch starting May 25th!

What’s in the future for Good Cakes and Bakes?

The goal is to have a community kitchen inside my current space, or at least in the neighborhood. Right now I bake out of a commercial kitchen in Southwest Detroit (part of Detroit Kitchen Connect) which I found through Foodlab. I look forward to expanding the educational component of my business by hosting baking and cooking classes here. We hope to continue more outreach to bring people from all over the city to the Livernois community.

We plan to expand our menu and bring more breakfast items in this fall. We also, plan to offer baking workshops this fall/winter in our space. Our ultimate goal is to have another location that allows us to bake more and ship our items nationwide.

We no longer offer Sunday brunch or weekly pop-ups. And now it’s First Fridays.

To the BUILD Institute Community,

On behalf of the BUILD Institute Board of Directors, we want to share that the Board has made the decision to pause operations at the end of 2025.

We recognize that we are living in a time of great uncertainty for small business support organizations across Michigan. This moment offers us an opportunity to reassess how BUILD delivers on its mission, retool our programming, and evaluate new partnership opportunities and our overall business model to ensure long-term sustainability and impact.

In the coming months, we will continue all scheduled programming through December to ensure that all commitments to entrepreneurs and partners are honored. During this time, we will also explore new ways to align our work with the evolving needs of our community, including our network of over 3,000 alums.

Please join us in showing appreciation for the team members and facilitators who have served Detroit’s entrepreneurs and supported BUILD’s mission since our founding in 2012.

If you have any questions about this decision or what it means in the near term, please email us at [email protected].

Thank you for your continued support and for being part of BUILD’s legacy of inclusive entrepreneurship.

With gratitude,
The BUILD Institute Board of Directors