A Huyton-based bakery has become Liverpool’s biggest cake making company after owner Liam Roberts spent years building his business.
Create A Cake, a boutique, award-winning cake maker, creates thousands of cakes each week, from huge celebration cakes to its famous cupcakes, baked fresh by the talented team of five bakers, all of whom have been part of the team for years.
Led by owner Liam Roberts, 36, from Childwall, Create A Cake was born out of his passion for cake making and baking which began whilst he studied a Business and Marketing degree at Liverpool Hope University.
Alongside his degree, Liam enrolled in a cake decorating night school course which introduced him to the basics of cake decorating and simultaneously sparked a love for all things baking.
Through trial and error, Liam mastered his baking skills, experimenting in his kitchen in his spare time and creating bespoke celebration cakes for close family members. His passion and creativity developed, which saw his skills flourish and he became an amazing cake designer, with an increasing number of friends and returning clientele wanting to order wedding cakes, bespoke celebration cakes and more.
The orders continued and Liam quickly outgrew his kitchen, needing a dedicated space for his new cake making business. He looked at many premises but found that the rent was too high given he’d just left university and was still living like a student.
By chance, the cake specialist found the space that Create A Cake still works from today on Page Moss Lane in Huyton, and the company has continued to grow and expand since Liam first opened his kitchen there in 2010.
Liam explained:
“In the early days, I used to literally fake it until I made it. I wouldn’t have a pound float in the till and I’d say “the last customer took all my change”, but the reality was the £20 being handed over was the only money the shop had taken that day… Every penny made was spent on the shop.
“I had a glamorous, fully stocked shop, with a posh sign and shop front, and I’d got home to beans on toast. I was determined to make the shop a success; I was asset-rich, cash poor.”
From then, Liam worked relentlessly to make and build the business, growing his clientele until the pandemic hit.
Liam continued:
“I know the pandemic was a difficult time for many people but for us, it actually helped Create A Cake – the business’ sales were sky high and it gave me the time I needed to stop and consider how I would pivot to continue trading as normal as possible. The only direction I thought would work was an online cake shop which I launched five years ago this month. We realised that there was a gap in the market – no other Liverpool-based cake shop had an online option where you couple order bespoke cakes. It blew up and was incredibly successful from the get go and we had to hire more staff to cope with the orders and to this day, it’s a huge part of the business.
“We take all of our Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Easter and Christmas orders through the system, as well as having over 250 set design online options to order from.”
Liam and his team found that their customers loved how user-friendly they’d made the website and process and because Liam had built the website himself, he could quickly adapt and make any changes necessary to continue making it even more accessible.
Create A Cake now makes thousands of cakes each year and has become one of Liverpool’s biggest cake makers and is still the only cake shop to have a website where clients can order bespoke and celebration cakes online. With a slogan of ‘Count the memories, not the calories’, Create A Cake bakes and decorates intricate designs with the team happy to bring their client’s visions to life.
Liam added:
“If you can imagine it, we can make it. We receive very intricate requests and are honoured to bring them to life. Not only are we able to deliver on wild and wonderful creations, our customers also love the convenience of shopping with us. They can buy a cake at 3 o’clock in the morning if they want to (and they do!).
“Our customers have remained very loyal over the years and have helped us to grow the business through word-of-mouth recommendations which has meant we’ve grown organically without having to spend a fortune on advertising. They travel all over the north west regularly especially from Crewe, Wirral, Ormskirk and Newcastle-Under-Lyme. It’s common for our clients to drive over an hour to collect their orders.”
Create A Cake is open Monday to Friday from 9am-4pm and Saturday from 9am-12pm. The website is active 24/7 so customers can purchase their dream bakes any time of day or night!
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