bake - February 2012 - 46

What’s in a Name?
Sometimes it takes a few years to get your new business off and running in the direction you want. Naming your company can be one of the trickiest propositions. When owners Allyson and Bill Fiander originally opened Daddy Cakes on Nov. 1, 2007 under the clock tower in the Gage Shopping Center in Topeka, KS, they introduced fancy, oversized cupcakes to Kansas, a place not known as a hotbed for gourmet foods. Yet they quickly succeeded,
Billy Vanilly is named after its most popular cupcake ﬂavor: a white cupcake with vanilla buttercream, rainbow sprinkles and a cherry on top.

proving the power of the cupcake trend sweeping

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Billy Vanilly opened its second location in November 2011 in a highly sought retail space in downtown Lawrence, KS.

the country. Their bakery was named the 2010 Kansas Retail Firm of the Year for minority/women-owned businesses by the Kansas Department of Commerce. Allyson Fiander, an experienced pastry chef who studied pastry and bread baking in France and attended the San Francisco Baking Institute, created a menu that included 24 ﬂavors of generously buttercream-topped cupcakes made from scratch and fresh every day. She also made special order cakes for events and weddings using the same great ﬂavors and ingredients found in her cupcakes. In June 2010, Fiander received more notoriety as a contestant on Food Network’s Cupcake Wars program. Yet national TV exposure came at a price. A California-based pancake company called Daddy Cakes decided to pursue legal action against the Topeka cupcake shop because it had ﬁled to trademark the name “Daddy Cakes” ﬁrst. After months of legal negotiations, Finader decided to voluntarily change their bakery’s name to Billy Vanilly, effective Feb. 1, 2011. “It’s hard to ﬁnd an original name that can be trademarked,” Fiander says now, noting that Billy Vanilly is the name of one of their unique cupcake varieties and the ﬁrst they ever sold. “We wanted our new name to be a name that our existing customers would recognize, our future customers would ﬁnd memorable, Looking forward, Fiander says their goal is to franchise Billy Their original Topeka store was all of 700 sq ft, and cost $8,000 to open. But opening the Lawrence store came at a price tag of roughly $140,000. The previous tenant had been a clothing store, so there was much work to be done. “We made a ton of leasehold improvements — adding restrooms, ﬁnishing the ﬂoors, building a kitchen. We ﬁnanced it through bank loans this time, which is a much different ballgame,” she says. “You instantly become much more of a business person.” A blessing in disguise? Quite possibly. By November 2011, Billy Vanilly opened its second location — in a highly sought-after retail space in downtown Lawrence, KS, a college town that is home to the University of Kansas. “When we originally opened, we knew we wanted multiple stores,” Fiander says. “Lawrence has the perfect demographics for our concept. As soon as we opened our doors in Lawrence, we were busy.”

and something that reﬂects the fun, quirky and extreme nature of our cupcakes. Making it through that ﬁrst hurdle opened up our options.”

46 < FEB 2012 | bakemag.com

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bake - February 2012

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