Serendipities bakery-cafe finds a sweet niche with sugar-free treats

Nation's Restaurant News, April 17, 2006 by Louise Kramer

With its flaky apple turnovers, moist red velvet cake and dense chocolate brownies, Serendipities, a bakery-cafe in Little Rock, Ark., is a dessert lover's dream come true.

All the treats are made from scratch daily, and what they lack is the very ingredient that makes them so popular: sugar. Serendipities is the only sugar-free bakery in Arkansas, a state known for its well-developed, if not over-developed, sweet tooth.

More than a quarter-million Arkansans have diabetes. From 1993 to 2003, the prevalence of the potentially fatal condition jumped by 35.1 percent to 7.9 percent of the state's adult population, according to state health statistics.

Mindful of those alarming numbers and her own family history of diabetes, Angela Strickland saw an opportunity. A former corporate marketing manager turned entrepreneur, Strickland, 32, opened her 20-seat shop in January 2005, and it immediately struck a chord with diners.

"We are filling a niche," she said. "There are no sugar-free bakeries, and there are so many people who want the sugar-free product."

Strickland has been selling up to 30 whole cakes, pies and cheesecakes per week, in addition to enough individual pastries and cookies to cover costs and the salaries of three part-time employees. Prices start at $21 for whole pies, $25.50 for cakes, and $27.50 for cheesecake. Brownies go for $2.50, and the turnovers sell for $1.95. Early this month she started supplying a major new account, the University of Arkansas Medical Center, which will increase sales by a third.

Serendipities is located in Little Rock's central business district and serves lunches to office workers. The health-oriented menu includes wraps, sandwiches, smoothies and salads.

The lunch patrons buy desserts, too, and are not put off by the fact the treats are made without sugar, Strickland said.

But there is a growing demand for the desserts from customers on restricted diets, as well as from people in other states. "People call from all over the country. I have to turn them away," she said.

Now Strickland is seeking to expand. She is working with a packager to start a mail-order business. She also hopes to create a franchise program to open Serendipities in other states.

Jeffrey Kolton, a franchising expert with the law firm Kaufmann, Feiner, Yamin, Golden & Robbins, said a concept like Serendipities has potential, but there is a high bar for success. The desserts must taste as good as those with sugar, and the business itself must be easy to replicate.

"The whole key is can she get

recipes that work and that can be made consistently," Kolton said. "There are enough people who are either diabetic or on some kind of sugar-free diet who would relish being able to have it."

Diabetes was a fact of life for Strickland's family. Her grandparents had it. Her father has diabetes, and she had gestational diabetes when she was pregnant with her son, now age 6. Her mother, who died last November at age 58, also had the disease.

Strickland, who has a degree in business administration from the University of Arkansas, has been baking since she was a child. When she couldn't find freshly baked desserts without sugar to serve her family, she decided to create some herself. She spent two years refining recipes, using blends of spices and flavors that her website claims "will fool even the most discriminating taste buds."

She started the bakery-cafe on a shoestring budget with her own funds and investments from friends and family.

Earlier this year, Serendipities won recognition from Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as one of the state's top six "Healthy Arkansas" restaurants. Huckabee, who lost more than 110 pounds after being diagnosed with diabetes in 2004, is trying to transform Arkansas from one of the least healthy states to one of the healthiest.

Huckabee is a Serendipities customer. "He likes the cheesecake," Strickland said.