Step through the door of an industrial unit in Ashton-under-Lyne and you may be transported to a world of battenburg, victoria sponge and black forest gateau.
Candy’s Cupcakes is fast becoming a Greater Manchester success story after turning over £2 million last year. It sells traditional-style cakes nationwide and has a fast-growing TikTok Shop which broadcasts six-and-a-half hours a day.
It all began when founder Candice Bannister began baking cupcakes from her home kitchen back in 2011.
“I used to manage supported housing schemes in Manchester for homeless people,” she tells me on a visit to the facility as part of my Founder Friday series.
“But I was very creative so, when I had my first child, I began playing around with baking and decorating cupcakes. I started a Facebook page and it grew organically from there, so I set up as a sole trader.”
Candy, as she is known, was a self-taught baker and began using YouTube tutorials and library books to expand her repertoire to more intricate bakes.
“I learned how to decorate and work with icing and sugars. I learned to do intricate sugar flowers, which allowed me to start making wedding cakes,” she recalls. “I just loved it.”
@businesscloud.co.uk From £300 in my home kitchen to £2m sales! Candice Bannister began selling #cakes from her home kitchen with a day one budget of just £300. Now @candyscupcakesuk ♬ original sound – BusinessCloud
With orders flying in and regular visits to events such as wedding fairs – not to mention a second child on the way – her diary was filling up. So she gave up her job in 2014 to work on the business full-time.
Ambition
By 2019 she was ready to take the next big step. “My ambition was never just to keep making cakes myself,” says Candy. “I had read a blog from a lady who said she didn’t want to be a baker for the rest of her life. She wanted to grow a business and expand it.
“So it kind of got in my head that, yeah, I could make this into something bigger than myself.”
She was supported by her husband Oliver, who had a forensic science background but had retrained to become a digital marketer.
“He said ‘right, let’s put £300 to one side to buy some stock’. Up to that point I’d bought stuff from Hobbycraft or wherever as and when I needed it!
“Oliver used me as a guinea pig – he built me an eCommerce website and designed me a logo. I then employed my first person and moved out of my home kitchen and into my mum’s garages.
“That’s a massive leap – to think you’re going to employ someone and that you’ve got to have enough money in your bank to pay them every month.”
She adds: “Then lockdown hit and I was like: ‘Oh no, this business is going to shut down.’”
Letterbox cake
The postponement of events such as weddings and birthday parties due to the COVID pandemic initially caused a significant drop in cake orders.
However Candy pivoted by delivering her products directly to customers’ letterboxes rather than shipping them to event venues.
She says their ‘cake in a box’ – four slices which slip neatly into a box small enough to fit through letterboxes – was an existing product but took off during lockdown.
“For contactless deliveries, it was perfect. It just went crazy overnight!” she says.
“Because I wasn’t a physical business with a shop – I was a purely online entity – I was able to stay open as long as I followed all the Government guidelines.
“People were sat at home and they still wanted to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries and the rest. Or they wanted to send ill relatives a gift in the post. So that was where we came in.
“I employed a guy who was furloughed from Virgin Airlines. I employed my hairdresser, because she couldn’t work.
“COVID was obviously awful, but we had such a fun time, looking back now.”
Traditional British flavours
Candy’s Cupcakes remains faithful to traditional flavours such as victoria sponge, lemon, Battenberg, cherry bakewell and Black Forest gateau, although I was quick to try my favourites the red velvet and carrot cake slices.
Another popular product is a ‘nostalgic school cake’ – vanilla sponge with runny icing and rainbow sprinkles.
“People absolutely love it – but they didn’t have it in my school!” says Candy. “It must be an age thing.
“We’ve found that if you over-complicate flavours, it just doesn’t work. People eat with her eyes.”
She adds: “I needed to think of products that I could teach the hairdresser how to make. I could teach you how to do them!”
Post-COVID
With businesses cutting back on marketing spending during lockdown, Oliver supported the expansion of the business by working for free as well as looking after the kids.
As COVID receded in the rear view mirror, he joined officially on a full-time basis.
“Moving into this unit was a massive, massive step for us,” says Candy. “It used to be an old nut and bolt factory; we had to gut it, build the office we’re in today, clean it down, paint it and make it into the five-star kitchen it now is.
“That took a lot of our profit. In hindsight, that was a mistake. If I could do it again, I would have sought some kind of finance, because it left us short and playing catch-up, although we obviously did recover.”
The only borrowing they ever did against the business was £25,000 from family which they paid back.
“We did £2m last year and we’ve grown 40% in each of the last two years. It’s gone wild. Now it’s about making that next big leap.”
TikTok Shop
A big driver of growth has been the company’s TikTok Shop, which has dedicated presenters and formerly ran until 10pm – but has recently been streamlined to broadcast from 9am to 3.30pm six days a week.
“It’s a bit like QVC,” says Candy as we watch the presenter chatting with customers under spotlights. “He’s got a microphone and is encouraging people to place orders. He then packs the orders live and they get shipped out.”
@businesscloud.co.uk @candyscupcakesuk ♬ original sound – BusinessCloud
Candy says the company is doing between £2-3k in sales a day on the channel, which accounted for 30% of its business last year.
By far the most popular product on TikTok Shop is the ‘cake in a jar’, which customers can literally eat directly out of the glass jar.
“I created that before M&S, by the way. Just putting that out there!” she laughs. “It started off as a bit of a teacher gift – I did a rainbow cake in a jar.”
ASCEND
Candy’s Cupcakes has been supported by advice from the GM Business Growth Hub, from a Tameside-based business development mentor to the dedicated manufacturing team, throughout its journey.
These last few months the collaboration has moved up a notch with participation on the ASCEND Scale Up Programme.
“It felt like a natural evolution. There is one-to-one mentorship with people who have exited a business, which is next-level.
“Both Susanna Lawson and Vikas Shah are very different, but amazing.
“Then there is the networking with the peers, because everyone is in the same boat, no matter what business they’re in. It’s just feeling that vulnerability as a founder, which you don’t get when you’re in your business.”
2026 plans
Candy is one of the most honest entrepreneurs I have met. Despite phenomenal growth in the last two years, she says 2026 is about evolving as a business.
“We’re going to work very much on profitability this year – try and repeat what we did last year, but grow a little bit more steady.
“When you grow too quickly, like we did in lockdown and again last year, your processes start to fail.
“It’s about constantly learning and thinking more strategically. ASCEND has massively helped me with that.”