April McClung of Emily’s Heirloom Pound Cakes has built a business around her grandmother-in-law’s beloved pound cake recipe.
Originally, April McClung only intended to make enough of her husband’s grandmother’s pound cakes to pay for both of her sons to go on educational trips abroad to the tune of $14,000.
Nearly six years later, Emily’s Heirloom Pound Cakes – named for the pound cake recipe’s originator - generates over $300,000 annually in revenue and McClung, the company’s founder and president, left her lucrative work in insurance to run the company full-time.
And the company continues to do well in the midst of COVID-19 despite many in-person sales opportunities drying up, forcing McClung to pivot and generate most of her sales on the web.
“We should have done this a long time ago,” she said. “COVID forced me to step back and figure out the website part of it, and that part is booming.”
Before she started the company in 2014, McClung had never made the pound cake herself, she said – it was her husband that made it about five or six times a year for events with their friends, who called the dessert “crack cake.” To fundraise for their two sons’ trips abroad, the whole family of four learned to make the cake and sold it to family, friends and at farmer’s markets, pulling in over $14,000 in just nine months. After seeing what the business could do, McClung left her full-time work to run Emily’s Heirloom Pound Cakes, which now has 15 employees.
“This pound cake represents love and family and fellowship. It’s just the best,” McClung said. “If you’re going to eat dessert, you may as well eat one that’s really good.”
The company sells 5,000 packaged slices a month and ships all over the country – a long way from Emily Magnolia McClung’s kitchen in Columbus, Miss., where the pound cake recipe was first tested. Every package of the pound cake includes a card telling the story of the company and of Emily, a cafeteria cook in segregated Mississippi who likely never dreamed the pound cake she made for her family would end up being such a successful minority- and women-owned business in Birmingham, Ala.
“I don’t think she ever dreamed a granddaughter-in-law would take her recipe and allow her cake to be enjoyed by people all over the country,” McClung said. “People absolutely love this cake. Once you taste it, it’s like no other – people cry, people dance, people curse.”
McClung’s goals for the business are big: She hopes to add a dessert food truck, develop products for grocery stores (including coffee, coffee creamer and a glass loaf dish in which to store the pound cake) and eventually build a pound cake manufacturing plant in Birmingham so, in her words, Emily’s Heirloom Pound Cakes can pump out pound cakes for the country from right here in the Magic City.
Emily’s Heirloom Pound Cakes started with just one recipe and has grown to 18 different flavors. Though the original flavor is still the company’s top seller, other flavors like lemon blueberry buttermilk, key lime, strawberry lemon and chocolate are also big hits. The company also offers gluten-free and sugar-free options and has even made wedding cakes.
In the immediate future, Emily’s Heirloom Pound Cakes is donating bite-sized snack cakes to front line workers at local hospitals during COVID-19, hoping the dessert can bring joy to those fighting the pandemic at the forefront.
“This pound cake is good soul food, something that brings everyone together,” McClung said. “I pray it will do for others what it has done for us.”