Illustration by Victoria Borges
Walking into Cakes By Graham at 718 N. Cleveland St. on a brisk mid-April morning, the atmosphere is a bit somber. There are no employees; no rush of business and baking, but there is a ringing phone. Debbie Edmonds, the longtime girlfriend of owner Graham Haddock, answers it. She tells the customer inquiring about a wedding cake that Haddock is closing his doors at the end of June.
“No, it wouldn’t last until July,” Edmonds responds to the caller, laughing as she hangs up the phone. This isn’t the first time a customer has tried to get just one more cake out of Haddock. After all, Haddock has become a staple in the Richmond wedding industry.
For Haddock, the decision to close is bittersweet. He has a passion for cake that he has developed from a young age and never thought he would be closing his business at age 57. He started developing task-specific tremors about two years ago, an affliction that is hereditary — his mother has the same condition. It causes his hands to shake when trying to complete specific tasks such as decorating a cake. After struggling to combat the uneasiness in his hands, he announced in December that he would close. He wanted to step away before his high standard of quality deteriorated.
But when life gives you lemons, you make lemon-poppy seed cake. Haddock is in the process of opening a new business, The Cake Coach, and he’ll officially begin that venture in July. He’ll be assisting other small businesses nationally with the ins and outs of getting a company off the ground and becoming more efficient. And not just cake companies, either. While he does have expertise in the wedding industry, he’s opening up his services to any small business to help them avoid the pitfalls he faced when starting his own company from scratch. “So I’m going to be passing on the knowledge and the experience that I’ve got to others rather than just close the shop,” Haddock says. “I’m still passionate about cakes so I want to pass that passion on, but just through a different avenue.”
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Graham Haddock in his Cleveland Street shop. (Photo by Ash Daniel)
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Graham Haddock in his Cleveland Street shop. (Photo by Ash Daniel)
Coming to America
Haddock jokes about how his British accent has been one of his assets, especially with his female customers. He grew up in the town of Basingstoke, about 60 miles southwest of London. He still calls it home, because it’s where his family resides, including his three adult daughters.
Haddock joined the British army after graduating high school, signing on for a 22-year commitment as a soldier chef. He began creating cakes as a hobby — he would cook in the army during the day and would spend his evenings and weekends baking cakes on the side. This is when he began developing his wedding cake decorating skills. The first wedding cake he created won an army competition. He still has the award and a picture of the cake hanging in his office.
In 1987, Haddock participated in an exchange program that stationed him in Fort Lee, Virginia, as a senior technical instructor for the U.S. Army Culinary Arts Team. In 1991, after living on base for two years, Haddock decided to take an early retirement after serving 16 of his 22 years. He was going through a divorce and decided this was the time to change careers and immigrate to the United States.
Setting Up Shop
Haddock worked at two different Richmond bakeries for about a year each before opening Cakes By Graham in January 1994. In his early years he subleased space on Marshall street downtown and on Gaskins Road in the West End. He bought his current space 12 years ago, converting it to suit his business.
He started completely on his own, doing every task from answering the phone, to production, public relations, advertising, sales, networking, purchasing products and more. “It was at times a little bit overwhelming, but it was very rewarding,” he says.
He dubbed his business as “Richmond’s only custom cakery,” meaning he didn’t make breads, desserts, muffins — strictly cakes and cupcakes. He gradually added help; he had three employees whom he let go in December.
“I started from having no customers to building what I’m quite proud of today as being a successful business with very loyal and great customers,” Haddock says.
Erinn Paris worked for Haddock in 2005. She went on to work at The Jefferson Hotel and Boar’s Head Inn before founding her own company in Staunton, Paris Cake Company, about a year ago. “I tell people all the time that I learned so much from him,” she says. “He is really, really great to learn from because he’s so organized and he’s an intense guy, but it’s great because you have to [produce at] the high quality that he does.”
Haddock shared advice and tips as she opened her own business, and he attended her grand opening.
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Photo by David Abel
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Photo by Graham Haddock
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Photo by Hayes & Fisk
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Photo by Wendell Powell
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Photo by Graham Haddock
Let Them Eat Cake
Haddock has a repertoire of about 57 different flavors and has used his same proprietary recipes since he opened. With flavors such as almond-chocolate chip, cranberry-orange-pecan and golden butter pound, customers have plenty of options. He has a hard time deciding which of his baked masterpieces are his favorite, noting that seeing the delight on the faces of the recipient makes all the effort worth it.
“Sometimes [customers] get emotional about [seeing their cake], because it’s exactly what they envisioned it would look like so then we know that we’ve done our job 100 percent,” Haddock says. “People have hugged me, people have kissed me … the money is not the reward, but the emotional gratification that someone really likes what we do, that’s most appealing to me.”
Baking for a Cause
Haddock has always been a regular at events, shows and fundraisers, chatting with people and offering free samples of his sweets. In the early years of his business, he remembers attending a chocolate festival fundraiser for the National Kidney Foundation. He vividly recalls meeting a boy named Joey who was about 10 years old; his ex-wife was friends with Joey’s mother. When Haddock saw Joey, he handed him a ganache-frosted, chocolate, orange and pecan cupcake. Battling cancer, Joey was confined to a wheelchair, but when he met Haddock, he was excited. “He reached out with all his effort to shake my hand in his wheelchair and that was a life changing moment for me,” Haddock says as he struggles to hold back tears. “So when he passed away … I then fell in love with everybody [at the ASK Childhood Cancer Foundation] and I started doing cakes for ASK.” Haddock has donated cakes to the foundation’s kids and to its events. He also stopped by with a monthly group birthday cake.
Alma Morgan, the educational consultant for ASK and VCU Medical Center, talked about Haddock’s devotion to the kids at a surprise party thrown in his honor in early February. “He looked like the energizer bunny. He was running all over town delivering cakes … but in the meantime he was coming to the clinic once a month to drop off the cake for our children and our families, donating it just to be nice.”
Now that Haddock is closing his business, he won’t have the same resources to create cakes, but the silver lining is he has more time to spend with ASK’s children. He has already started volunteering in the organization’s after-school program.
The Next Chapter
Haddock is looking forward to starting the next phase of his career as a business coach, even though he has led a life dedicated to cake decorating. “It was a tough decision, I had been contemplating if for some time … would I second-guess myself, would I have any regrets, and I didn’t,” he says. “I’ve got to move forward based on that decision and so the future will bring some new and exciting things for me to do.”
That was a sentiment seconded by Jamie Hayes of Hayes & Fisk Photography. at Haddock's surprise party. “This is just the beginning of something that probably was your destiny all along and the first chapter was just to prepare you for what you are about to get now.”
