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Lessons in Cheesecake
By Gary Perilloux
When Tammy Craddock says life is more than a box of cheesecake, she isn't kidding. But next to her husband Jim, daughter Shelby and son Tyler, cheesecake is the Columbus entrepreneur's pride and joy. The owner of Jubilations Inc. regaled a First Friday gathering of the Community Development Foundation at Tupelo's Mall at Barnes Crossing. Renowned for gourmet cheesecakes consumed at Cracker Barrels and aboard the Amtrak Crescent from New York to New Orleans, Jubilations sold more than $1 million worth of cheesecakes shipped to all 50 states in 2001. But getting there took gumption as Craddock survived her crash course in the cheesecake world with grit, wit and determination. "It shows what a good idea and dedication will do," CDF Chairman Larry Kirk said. "And it also points out the importance of having a good business climate for small business." Green acres An aerospace engineer and third-generation farmer, Jim Craddock moved to Mississippi with Tammy in 1971 to raise soybeans, corn and children. Tammy, who'd headed a St. Louis business school, found her home-catered delectables drawing bushels of Mississippi customers by the 1980s. When a church bazaar she headed cleared $18,000 in one night, Jim suggested she reenter the workplace. But doors closed when she tried to bite off being a full-time food manufacturer. "Yes, I was a stay-at-home mom," she said. "I was a token woman on the school board, I was a president of the PTA, I was a Sunday School teacher. ... But when you get your degree and stay at home 15 years, see how much it's worth. It isn't worth much." It took her a year to find a building. "Everybody thought I wanted a cutesy little bakery with frilly curtains," she said, "because, you know, that's what women are supposed to do." All the Craddocks' land and vehicles were in Jim's name, Tammy didn't own a credit card and lenders rejected her three times. Finally, a dear businesswoman friend cosigned her loan and Jubilations was born in 1989. The hard knocks would be plentiful. An exterminator once stole 400 cheesecakes in the dead of night. But Craddock grew up in business with Harvey's restaurateur John Bean, who initially bought four cheesecakes every two weeks in Starkville but snapped up 50 in the second week Harvey's opened in Columbus. Still, Craddock needed to broaden her horizons beyond home. By 1992 - Craddock's make-it-or-break-it year - she chased sales at Junior League shows and, despite not having driven a stick shift for years, mastered motoring an 18-foot truck to Mobile. One motel evicted her there because of the raucous truck. And when the Junior League women of Mobile declined to drive her to a new room for liability reasons, Craddock and a sidekick found surrogate chauffeurs: The women were ushered to a new motel by a pair of gun-toting jewelry hucksters, one of them sticking his head through the moonroof of a Mercedes-Benz while relishing the role of would-be Secret Service agent. At night, Craddock washed silverware in the motel room bathtub for the next day's show. Five years ago, Craddock's cheesecake world nearly was shattered. She turned 50, her grandmother died, her mother was diagnosed with a terminal illness, entered a nursing home and died in October, two company vans were involved in wrecks and during the hectic Christmas season a freezer froze up then melted $4,000 worth of cheesecake. On top of it all, an employee betrayed her while Craddock spent time with her mother. "My initial reaction was I've got to save mother's life," she said. "While I was doing that, my original employee tried to ruin me and she about got the job done." Bouncing back Her husband wouldn't let her quit. "Jim and I believed in this so much that we sank every penny of ours into Jubilations," Craddock said. "It was not a choice of whether it was going to work. It was what was I going to have to do to make it succeed." The same attention to detail and customers that she started out with helped her survive the trials. An early thorough business plan developed with help from Mississippi State University's Food & Fiber Institute paid dividends. "That business plan was crucial," Craddock said. "By the time, I started Jubilations, I knew to the penny how much everything was going to cost." There were moments of levity along the way. "I had absolutely nothing to do with this," Craddock said, holding up a Christmas edition of a men's magazine. "I've been in Playboy - way in the back." The issue featured Jubilations among its recommendations for mail order food, but confusion reigned supreme. A local newspaper ran the headline, "Local lady to show her stuff in Playboy." While standing in the grocery line, an acquaintance asked Craddock when she would be in Playboy, raising a questioning eyebrow from the checkout person. "I said, 'Don't I hide the bottom well,'" Craddock kidded the clerk. "And she said, "You go, girl." Daily triumphs surface at her Jubilations headquarters, where she has posted a poem that includes the lines, "The greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. ... Only a person who risks is free." Among the rewards is the blossoming of Julius, an uncommunicative former special education student when he came to work for her. "He's really improved to the point where Julius' mother said, 'I don't know what you've done to that boy, but I can't shut him up,'" Craddock said. "Well, we play a mean game of Scrabble every day at lunch and Julius can spell. Julius can beat me." Today, Craddock wears her hurdled business barriers as badges of honor. And she even hires men. "I've been called everything from honey, sweetie pie and a dumb-ass woman right to my face," Craddock said with a smile. "I'm not a woman's libber, but it's just so neat to know you can do this. The brain has come back. I wondered after so many years of cheesecake if I could do all this. But you can do it, honestly. I still enjoy the challenge and the art of the deal." |
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