Kory Joyner: owner: superstar pastry design.

• Author: Stomierowski, Peg
• Position: View from the Top

Kory Joyner puts in 60 to 90 hours a week at the bakery she started in 2004. Besides the books, she does custom cakes for about three weddings and 12 parties a week, working with her assistant Yazmin. A cupcake "slinger"/barista, a dishwasher and couple of interns provide part-time support.

Joyner traces her passion to fifth grade. "We had a Mini Society, and the booth I opened was a bakery," she says. She attended King Career Center Culinary Arts program and later the California Culinary Academy. Joyner worked out of a commercial kitchen until 2008, when she opened her shop, tripling sales from 2007 to 2008.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

* CAKES ARE KING: We value fresh ingredients, scratch baking, knowledge base, and trained employees. We stock a small line of baked goods and do holiday pies or cakes for Christmas, Thanksgiving and Mardi Gras, but we decided 20 months ago to focus on cakes.

* GREAT EXPECTATIONS: We have high standards for cake decor, and with a wedding, there's no such thing as a do-over. We can do custom cakes, replicate designs, or do 3-D carvings. Our first year we did more basic party cakes, but we had to establish a minimum order for custom cakes. As more folks realized they could get a "TV cake" in town, it raised the cost and the challenge.

* SOMETHING NEW: Our Cupcake Bar is like a Cold Stone. Customers choose their cakes, filling, icing, and toppings. Added in 2009, this is popular; we take it to the Women's Show and the Spring Fling for Women. Before that, trying to guess what flavor combo would sell each day led to waste. By this March, cupcakes represented about 20 percent of our 2011 business--13 percent in 2010--up from just 1.5 percent in 2009. We are also seeing more weddings using cupcakes with or without a more traditional cake.

* BLOOD, SWEAT & TEARS: Often we begin...