Main Street Mavericks Business Spotlight: Ida’s Cupcake Cafe

When Autumn Lodge Persinger, owner of Ida’s Cupcake Cafe in Bend, Oregon, first learned about a cupcake business for sale, she knew it was serendipity — everything aligned, and she made an offer by the next morning. Guided by her love of baking and a restaurant-industry background, Persinger navigated her business through COVID and has made her establishments a family-run affair.

With delicious cupcakes with a unique twist, if you are in Bend, a stop at the cupcake cafe is a must. Come meet Autumn and learn more about Ida’s Cupcakes!

Q&A With Ida’s Cupcake Cafe

Tell us about yourself and your small business.

I’m Autumn Lodge Persinger, and I own Ida’s Cupcake Cafe. We have three locations, two here in Bend and one in Redmond. The one on Division Street in Bend is our primary bakery, our main bakery, and then our Galveston store on the west side was our flagship store.

The one in Redmond is more recent. We opened a month before COVID hit, so that’s been an interesting challenge, but it’s a great space as well. Ida’s Cupcakes was started in 2008 by Ida herself. She thought it would be something fun to do in retirement, and it grew well beyond what she had expected. And in 2018, she retired for real.

And that is when I bought the business. It was kind of a light bulb moment for me. My background is actually in art and art history. I was a professor of art history for five years in Ohio before we moved to Oregon. I had been in the restaurant business for 13 years after moving to Oregon. The realtor who was selling Ida’s business happened to be a neighbor of mine. And one night, he was talking to his wife at dinner about how he was struggling to find the right buyer. And she said, well, have you called Autumn?

So, he gave me a call that night, and we made an offer the next day.

I had always loved to bake. I grew up next door to my grandmother. And she taught me to bake when I was very, very young. And so I always loved that. I loved the artistic and creative aspect of it because of my art background. Then, I had the restaurant experience as well. So, it seemed like the perfect fit.

What is your favorite thing about your business?

My favorite thing about the business is its family-owned aspect. I’m really proud of being a small business owner, both a female and a mom, in particular. I have three children, two of whom work here and have for years. The youngest has, on occasion, he’s still learning.

But we do not just have my family; we have a number of other families as well. So we have a baker, for instance, whose daughter is our wedding coordinator. Um, and then a lot of our employees grew up with my kids. I used to volunteer at my children’s elementary school. And so I got to know a lot of those kids really well.

And now they’re in their twenties, and they make great hires because I’ve known them their whole lives. I know their families, and they make great employees. So, we have an interconnected family atmosphere. I think that is probably my favorite part about it — the community that we’ve established.

What is your top piece of advice for business owners just starting out?

My top piece of advice for small business owners just starting out is to be ready to work hard. Be ready to be on call 24 seven, always be available, and hit the ground running. And you never know what’s going to happen. There’s something every day; something breaks, something dies, and somebody calls out sick.

You have to always be able to fill those spots, make things work, and find a way to make it happen. I think knowing every aspect of the business and being able to fill in wherever needed is important as well. For instance, we had a baker out with COVID. I took on the baking, which I don’t do on a daily basis, but I certainly have learned to be capable of doing it when needed.

You need to be able to handle all aspects of it.

What is the best piece of advice you’ve received?

My father is my inspiration and my advisor. He passed away, unfortunately, just a month after I bought Ida’s, which made the transition a little more difficult, I must say.

But he was an elementary school teacher, and then a principal, and then superintendent of city schools, and then a business owner as well. And he taught me that you never ask someone to do something for you that you would not do for yourself. And that you need to work hard for others if you expect them to work hard for you.

So those were very key points and pieces of advice.

What’s one of your favorite things to work on here at Ida’s?

I love creating new flavors. That’s probably one of my favorite parts — the creativity behind it, getting to come up with a new flavor. We have our standards, but our seasonals tend to rotate. And so we’re constantly playing with flavors and coming up with new variations.

I like to say that I know it’s right when I can feel my grandmother smiling at me. She taught me to bake when I was little. And it’s just the sensation that I get. My brother thinks I’m crazy, but that’s okay. If it works, then it’s okay. It’s this great feeling that I get from coming up with something new and creating something that people will enjoy.

Is there an overlap between teaching and the skills needed to run a small business?

Yeah. It’s huge. There’s a huge overlap. I feel like I didn’t lose that part of my career because I’m still teaching completely different things. I’m teaching young people how to be in the workplace, how to have a job, how to handle money, how to deal with customers.

I think that’s huge and definitely a much-needed skill and something that, especially post-COVID, a lot of people kind of struggle with those relations, customer relations, and so that’s something that we’re constantly working on.

You have three locations — when is the right time to expand?

Well, you never know because, like I said, we opened up literally a month before COVID hit, so you think it’s the right time, but you can’t control the future.

We were lucky in that we were considered essential. So we were able to be open. We had the lobbies closed, and we did a lot of deliveries. We did a lot of mail orders where we were shipping around the country, which we still offer, but we did it very, very frequently during that period of time.

We had multiple phone lines going at the locations so that someone could call when they got there, and you could run it out to them, and they didn’t have to come in if they weren’t comfortable with it. And we had a spot set out, set up outside of each store as well, where we could set things down so you didn’t have to hand it directly to people.

So it was a lot of maneuvering, but we made it work and one of the nice things for us actually was that when the schools were closed, we were able to have students working, which actually made staffing easier for us during COVID because we had that access to high school and college students that weren’t physically going to class and were therefore available during the hours were open, which is more of a struggle now actually than it was then.

How is your business different from the competition?

We’re a little different than most cupcake places because it’s all custom. So you pick your cake and your flavors of frosting, and we frost to order. We bake them fresh every morning in three different sizes. So we have what we call kid cakes, which are a classic cupcake size. We have gourmets, which are twice as big as a standard cupcake. Then we have our little bite-sized minis, which are sold by the dozen. You can pick your size, you pick your cake flavor, and then you pick your frosting. It’s a little, little unusual in that regard.

We also do cakes. We do parfaits. We make our caboodles, which are premade parfaits, by taking the top part of the cakes and using it in the caboodles to cut down on waste.

One of the other things that we’re most proud of is our gluten-free and vegan options. So we make our own gluten-free flour mix from scratch, and it so closely mimics regular cupcakes that most people can’t tell the difference. So we have a lot of gluten-free brides, for instance, who will get their entire wedding done as gluten-free and then only tell the people that need to know and no one ever knows.

And so we’re, we’re really proud of that aspect. Creating new flavors and new products with that and having alternatives for people who can’t enjoy a “normal” cupcake.

The one thing I put my foot down on is sugar-free, though. We get asked for sugar-free a lot, and I absolutely refuse. I absolutely refuse.

If you need a sugar-free cupcake, you shouldn’t have one. Find an alternative that’s not a cupcake.

We’re back here in five years, celebrating Ida’s Cupcakes; what are we celebrating?

Endurance. I would say endurance. I think it’s an unusual feat to be able to stay in business for that long as a small business owner with all the challenges, particularly financial challenges right now. You know, the cost of butter is no small thing. So, being able to continue producing a quality product without going up too much in price is constantly a challenge.

So to maintain that, I think I would call for a celebration.