Warren Brown's journey from government lawyer to baking entrepreneur began in part when he was carrying a cake through an airport.
The sight of that cake in Brown's hands led strangers to start conversations, share comments and ask questions. Brown now says: "I realized there's power that's in cake." Being unhappy with his 9-to-5 job coincided with discovering a love of baking that ultimately led him to follow his dream, opening his first CakeLove bakery in Washington, D.C. in 2002.
Now Brown, 39, owns six CakeLove bakeries and one café in and around Washington. For several years he hosted "Sugar Rush," a show devoted to sweets on the Food Network. His second cookbook has just been released: "United Cakes of America: Recipes Celebrating Every State." Beyond his business success, Brown and his wife have a 6-month-old daughter.
Brown was in Raleigh on Tuesday speaking to small-business owners and those with entrepreneurial dreams about what lessons could be learned from the down economy. He toured the Carolinas this week with similar speaking engagements in Charlotte and Columbia, S.C.
After his talk Tuesday morning, Brown sat down to answer a few questions.
Q: Do you often speak to small-business owners?
I try to speak one to three times a month. ... It's a lot of what I like to do. It's interesting. Some people ask me: "Are you going to keep growing the business?" You know, having more stores isn't necessarily going to give me more of what I want. ... Talking to people about what I do and about following their own passions so they can build their own business - that's a lot of what I'm interested in doing.
Q: What advice do you share with these people?
I try to say to people: If you want to go into business, then know the business cold; so you have the confidence that you need all the time to continue to guide yourself in pursuit of that business objective. ... If you know your business and you are confident about it, then you can sell the business well. You can sell the concept, the idea to staff and customers.
Q: Where did the idea for your latest cookbook come from?
(Brown's first cookbook, "CakeLove: How to Bake Cakes from Scratch," came out in 2008.)
It preceded the first cookbook in terms of ideas in my head. When I was trying to find my writing voice for the first cookbook, I was trying to write about things that I knew. I know American history, or some parts of it. I studied it at least. I tried to write a mission statement of what we were doing at CakeLove and I used the preamble to the [U.S.] Constitution as the base. I reworked it, tweaked it. I did that as one of the first writing exercises for my cookbook-writing experiences. Once I wrote it, I loved it but there was no place for it in the first cookbook. So I tabled the idea. "United Cakes of America" seemed like a natural. It didn't fit as a first cookbook ... but I pitched it as a follow-up and [the publisher] liked it.
Q: What is the recipe you keep going back to in the new cookbook?
Sweet potato cake. It's one of the ones I created and designated as the cake for Louisiana. It's just awesome, and the cream cheese icing I like a lot. It's a little different. It is with evaporated milk. It's a little watery when you first mix it. I chill it to help it set up or use extra cold butter and cream cheese. The cake itself is very nice.
Q: Do you have another cookbook in the works?
Yes, brunch. I'd give you a title if we had one but we don't. It will be on brunch - pancakes, waffles, scones, frittatas. I want to make sure that people know there's more to me than just cakes. Baking is secondary in terms of how did I get to the kitchen. And brunch is one of my favorite meals of all. I think it's a natural bridge. It's a lot of the same ingredients.
Q: Beyond the book, what's next for you?
In a lot of ways it's waiting out the storm that we're in ... I want to spend time with my family. I want to spend time reaching out to other people in business so they feel empowered as their own individuals to do their business. Maybe I'll want to get back into the fray and open more locations. At this moment, I'm more focused on the family.
