Meet Sasha Monroe of Monroe Sweets

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sasha Monroe.  

Hi Sasha, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I have technically been baking my whole life and never thought too much of it, one day in college I had prepared a variety of cookies just to give out and a friend asked why don’t I sell my products instead of doing it for fun. That moment I thought why not? I have also been a hustler/ entrepreneur and at the time I was in a weird spot where prior to basketball was my entire life. I was injured my senior year of high school with a torn ACL, and I needed something to replace my time while I healed; coming into my freshman year of college just when I thought I could be a walk-on for the team, I retore my ACL and just knew basketball was only going to be played for fun from here on out. During my transfer, I decided to spend more time working on my craft. Monroe sweets began back in Kalamazoo in October 2016 we went to our first pop-up in November 2016 and the rest was history. I began to get a steady customer base with a lot of college colleagues, and thru word of mouth, I would also travel frequently from Detroit to Kalamazoo to deliver orders, after we became established, I then began to be more active within the city of Detroit going to a wide variety of pop-up shops making a lot of connections. I was then in 2020 offered to be a part of GrubHub and door dash to run a platform, and soon thereafter, I created a website so people from all over could place orders, here we are in 2022 running strong and still growing doing something I enjoy doing and hope to have a storefront real soon 

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
No, not by a long shot. Starting a business is not for the weak it is something that you have to give your all and treat with care. You must be overly dedicated and willing to put the work and invest into your business. You will have some months where you are barely making ends meet then a week later you have an order for $600 plus. My biggest struggle would be trying to do everything yourself from marketing keeping up with. legal matters, banking, loans, credit, making the actual product, responding to customers in a decent time, payroll, and more. Those long nights and days of putting in work just to say the event or customer doesn’t want the order. The biggest of all would be not having enough funding to start off 

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next, you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Monroe Sweets LLC is a bakery/clothing line. We service special occasions and catering, from a host of pastries, cakes, cookies, pies, cobbler, and puddings. Hoodies, t-shirts, hats, beanies, and more to come. We only offer the REAL DEAL ONLY everything homemade, made in home, no substitutes. We put love into each product and offer the best customer service. We are a local business who services local Detroit and surrounding areas; we give back to our community throughout the year a 

What’s next?
My future plans would be to open a storefront inside of the city of Detroit, which would be a major change for me at the moment everything is home based. With having a storefront more people would have an opportunity to support the business and will also generate wealth in an area there is not a lot of black-owned business inside of our own neighborhoods. I want our people to be able to shop within our neighborhood and not have to go far out. 

Pricing:

• pound cake $30
• standard layer cake $35
• specialty cakes start $65
• t-shirts $25 and up

Contact Info:

• Website: www.monroesweetsenterprise.com
• Instagram: monroesweetsllc
• Facebook: monroesweets24