There’s a feeling in the air that this is Andra Hall’s moment. Her delicious cupcakes are adored not only by Atlanta foodies at baby showers, birthday parties, weddings and high teas, but also by sweet lovers in Florida, where she launched her bakery business.
Hall quit her full-time job with the government to care for her daughter, devised a business plan and picked up an apron.
She’s the founder of CamiCakes, a fast-growing cupcake confectionary with two Atlanta locations — Buckhead and Vinings — and is quickly taking the reins as a baking legend in the city. Yes, she’s Atlanta’s very own dessert duchess. Hall says modestly that she and her husband, Curtis, “are just ordinary people.” CamiCakes, named after Hall’s daughter Camille, grossed $2 million in 2010.
“We are looking at expanding to Charlotte, [N.C.], next,” she reveals. “My goal is to open one store a year.” The two original CamiCakes are in Florida.
Hall graduated from her mom, Earnestine’s, soul food kitchen and spent family trips to the library burying her head in cookbooks. “My mom was the ‘cake lady,’ she made cakes for everybody during the holidays. I wanted to learn and I was always in the kitchen following her around.”
CamiCakes offers 18 classic cupcake flavors including strawberries ‘n cream, chocolate on chocolate, sweet potato, carrot cake and red velvet — a Southern favorite that is topped with “velvet cream cheese frosting studded with lightly-toasted pecans.”
Hall says she enjoys giving back by donating her culinary creativity to churches and social causes like breast cancer awareness. –yvette caslin
