Mother, Daughter Looking for Investors in Oswego Bakery

Kristi George admits she “can’t make a pie to save my life.” But when it comes to cupcakes, the Yorkville resident is a connoisseur.

And her confections have become an instant success in Kendall County.

These days, George, along with her mother, Diana Jensen, own and operate the home-based Cupcakes 2 Remember, and a Whole Lot More, Inc.

For those who need their pie fix, that’s where Jensen comes in.

“Mom does all the pies,” George said.

The duo also make cookies, cheesecakes and seasonal candies, using family recipes.

“I use my great-great grandmother’s recipes and my grandma’s rolling pin,” George said proudly.

The finished products have proven to be a delicious success.

During the Yorkville Farmer’s Market, which George and Jensen regularly participate in, it’s not unusual for them to sell about 150 cupcakes in four hours.

And these are no ordinary treats. George tends to eschew the ordinary.

“I don’t do your typical vanilla cupcake with chocolate frosting,” she said.

Instead, she prefers to create confections such as the Fat Elvis, a banana cupcake with chocolate ganache filling and peanut butter frosting.

“We can’t keep it in stock when we make it,” George said.

Others of her more than 20 flavors include Pina Colada, Key Lime Pie, Malted Milk Shake, Rootbeer Float and White Chocolate Mud.

“I try to come up with a new flavor every week,” George said.

With fall coming, she will bring back the pumpkin cupcakes, as well as develop more flavors to suit the season.

She relies on customer feedback to help steer her creations.

“Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t,” she said. “When someone gives us their feedback, we take it very seriously. We use the Farmer’s Market people as my guinea pigs. And my husband is my biggest taste-tester.”

The popularity of the mother-daughter baked goods has caused a need for more space.

“We’ve kind of outgrown our current situation and need to open up a bakery,” George said.

They are currently looking for investors to help them expand their business. They would like to move into a commercial retail space in the Mason Square Shopping Center in Oswego. The business concept would be a bakery and coffee house, as well as a light lunch offering. They also plan to have a caterer who will prepare oven-ready meals to be stored in a cooler and picked up by patrons.

“Our primary focus would be cucpakes, and we’re branching out into more of the speciality cakes,” George said. “We have our health license. We’ve been working with the Small Business Administration developing our business plan. We’re pretty far long. We’re just at a roadblock trying to raise capital.”

A second facet of the business would include the duo’s donation of a portion of all their cupcake sales to the Brain Research Foundation in Chicago, in honor of George’s son, A.J. Branson, who is mentally handicapped, and both of her grandmothers who suffered from neurological disorders later in life.

“This is a very important cause to me,” George said.

She and her mother are looking forward to bringing what they say is a much-needed full-service bakery to Oswego.

“I’m hoping there will be an angel investor somewhere who will be able to help us,” George said.

Customer Bernice Luk Gulbro ordered an assortment of different flavored cupcakes for her son's 7th birthday.

'Not only were they all delicious, but even with only a day's notice, they took the extra effort to spell out my son's name in chocolate molded letters and stuck them to the tops of the cupcakes," she said. "I'm so happy we finally have a gourmet bakery here in Yorkville and will definitely use them again."