Support local Businesses

There has been so much disconnection from the world because of the things happening around us and, in order to combat that just a little bit, follow Deenie and her efforts to shed a little light on our local businesses.

G. G. Sugarplums bakery

By Deenie Bulyalert

Buisness Hours

Monday- Closed

Tuesday- 10:30 am - 3 pm

Wednesday- 10:30 am - 3 pm

Thursday- 10:30 am - 3 pm

Friday- 10:30 am - 3 pm

Saturday- 10:30am - 1:30 pm

Sunday- Closed

GG sugarplum is located at 225 SE 6th S. With such an amazing owner (Danielle) and the most delicious desserts, if you're ever crating some treats don't be scared to call in a place an order.

Phone: (541) 944-7528

Danielle (Owner of GG Sugarplums)

Have you always been the owner of this business?

Yes, My sister and I started it in 2010.

Our grandmother, who we call Grandma Sugar Plum, she was always a baker. She always made sweet treats and things and so she kind of got us into doing it so, when we wanted to open a business together, we decided to do a bakery and named it after her, so we called it GG Sugarplums.

What made you decide to open a Bakery?

What was it like for you when you first opened your business?

My sister and I had owned businesses previously and so we already kind of knew how to run a business, but it was a lot of burning by fire basically. The difference with this business and the other one is grand, but we got her kitchen license and we were just doing it out of my sister's house for several years. We would do custom cake orders mostly, like wedding cakes or birthday cakes. When that grew, we decided to go into a mobile unit, so we moved into a mobile bakery food truck. We did that for a few years and, when this building became available, we decided to get a storefront, which was our end game from the beginning. We always wanted to eventually get into a store front.

I owned a dog bakery, so I used to bake treats for dogs. I loved it. It was a lot of fun because I got to bake and spend time with dogs

What did you do before you opened this business?

Did you ever think that you would own a bakery?

I thought I would probably own my dog bakery a lot longer but, a long time ago, when the economy went down, people weren't spending very much on their dogs at that time so it didn’t make sense for me to keep the business; it was too hard to pay for. Going from that to doing people food: my dog treats kind of looked like people treats anyways. It was just safe for dogs, so it wasn’t that far of a stretch to start making stuff for people.

Probably just the flexibility of it being able to determine what my hours are, determine my work load. I like interacting with people on a daily basis. I love customer service. It's my favorite thing.

What is your favorite part about running this business?

Are there any impactful situations or memories that you will cherish for a long time?

Something that we've just been able to do to be a part of is, every year, for the last few years, we’ve been a part of the Rogue Winterfest and we donated cakes. It started out with us donating 5 cakes. The next year we did another 5 cakes and, the year after, we ended up doing all of the desserts, so we did about 30, 31 cakes. This year, we did 75. Because it was a virtual event, they got a lot more people attending. That was a lot of fun and that brings in for our charity for our mental health organizations here locally and that’s just a big thing, so being able to be a part of that, to bring excitement to the event, it's just a way for us to give back to our community. It's our favorite event of the year. It’s Christmas time and giving to the mental health and making a bunch of cakes and making people happy, it’s all the stuff we set out to accomplish in just one event

We had to shut down completely when schools were closed and the first businesses were closed, too, but mostly because schools were closed. I had my daughter doing online school; I couldn’t have her doing that and me working at the same time. We tried, but it just wasn’t going to work. I ended up having to close a lot longer than I wanted to. It was about 3 months, I think. Since coming back, it has definitely been a lot slower. The foot traffic is not there. I had a lot of cancellations on wedding orders and celebration cake orders, since people couldn't gather anymore. All of the orders that I’ve been getting are way smaller than what I would normally get so, instead of getting bigger cakes, I'm getting smaller versions of what they wish they could have. The biggest noticeable difference is that everything is smaller scale and the walk in business is just not what it should be.

How has Covid impacted your business?

How have you coped with the ups and downs during this pandemic?

The biggest thing is that, when my sister and I started this, we agreed that is would grow slowly and we would grow with it. We really took our time and that allowed us to not put ourselves in a position where we are in debt because we got business loans or because we just put up a ton of capital that we didn’t have up front. We just grew very slowly over the last 11 years. We are not in over our heads at any point and, if it did become stressful or impacted out family, whether it was money-wise or time-wise, we would gravity that immediately. The business can't be in charge of our lives, since there are more things important in life than just money and business. It's been a slow, growing balance that we have created and it's worked so far; we've been able to survive the COVID stuff.

Is there anything you would like to say to those who may be facing the same struggles as you?

I would stay with something that you love doing and just persevere. I know the one thing that I talked about with my family when it came down to COVID impacting everything and business being slower and still having to pay rent was: do we start getting loans? How much do we go into debt to keep this business alive during this time? We just figured it wasn’t worth it for us to put our family in debt in order to save the business, if it came to that, even though it’s something I love.

It's my whole heart. It's truly a struggle [to determine] what the best way to go may be. For me, it's a lot different because I'm not a restaurant with a full staff and, like I said, a ton of capital involved in it. For us, it was just being really smart and looking at the numbers and keeping that balance between our family finance and business finances and making sure were not digging ourselves into a hole that we won't be able to get out of, even when we come back. It’ll take years and years to dig out of. That just isn't a struggle that I wanted to put on myself on the business on my family. It was a really hard decision.

Just look at it objectively and write out the pros and cons of everything. Just take your time making decisions and grow slowly. Don't be in such a rush because you can make a lot of mistakes that way. If it's something you love, you'll figure out a way to make it work. If it doesn't work, then maybe write it out and try it again when the economy is better, so you can revamp yourself. That's just the way we look at it. It’s a lot different. Some people in business are like, "Do whatever it takes. Get the loans, keep all your people," but when your dealing with a very, very small business like mine, where you only have one or two people at any given time, most of the burden falls on me personally or my family, so I have to be careful with that.

Note: to the person who requested Heavenly Sweets, I tried reaching out to them to see if they would be willing to be interviewed but they were quite busy but I will keep trying for you. I'm pretty curious what their answers will be as well so I will try my best <3

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