Lauren Wille

Customized cakes, authentic ice cream, and unique chocolates can all be found under one roof in Chicago’s Lincoln Sqaure neighborhood. Cathay Rayhill, master of cakes and pastries, Lauren Prett, chocolate enthusiast and candy maker, and ice cream guru, Alison Bower, joined forces to create the Sweet Collective. Upon its opening in October 2007, this co-op bakery has been serving up all sorts of goodies with the use of one cash register.

The owners of The Sweet Collective began talk of starting a business together three years ago. Rayhill and Bower met while studying at French Pastry school in Chicago. Prett met Rayhill as her intern at Vanille Patisserie. The trio had all wanted to start their own business, and started meeting up to taste one another’s products. “I’m not sure who came up with it, but someone suggested ‘we should all just do this together.’” Rayhill said.

Each chef has something delicious to bring to the table. Prett’s Windy City chocolate collection truly gives you a taste of Chicago. With chocolates named after Chicago neighborhoods, you can go to Chinatown, Greek Town and Humboldt Park in one visit. Rayhill’s cakes can rise to any occasion, from a Chicago Cubs theme complete with beer, Cracker Jacks and hot dog, to a Fisher Price garage housing four cars. Even on a bitter cold day Bower’s unique ice cream flavors like Mango Ginger and Blackberry Lavender are hard to pass up.

With this economy, it’s difficult for any business to survive. And with small businesses popping up constantly, the idea of survival of the fittest becomes more prominent. Bakeries, specifically, have a harder time making ends meet since the amount of them seems endless. What makes The Sweet Collective special? Well, they’re a co-op. In some cases, three heads are better than one.

“It has been really beneficial for us,” said Rayhill. “We can split the expenses three ways. Not only monthly, but with the initial set up costs of equipment, build out, etc.” The business partners also say that being able to run the retail portion of the store as a team is a huge help. When one or more of them has an offsite event or delivery, there will always be someone there to cover, which means never having to close the store or hire an employee.

“It’s also helpful that we get to support each other,” Rayhill said. “So whenever one of us gets a contact-press, wholesale, retail-we promote each other. As we have all gotten press individually, it’s a great way to spread the word about us.”

Although out of the same shop, The Sweet Collective is three separate businesses. Each has its own telephone number and contact information, as well as separate revenue. Legally, they are each an S-Corp.

“So, on the register say, we each have our own button so we can keep track of sales to each company and keep it separate,” Rayhill said. “It’s a bit more bookkeeping but it’s the easiest way we could think of to keep it separate.”

In the middle of its second year, The Sweet Collective was met with some rocky terrain. The economy was beginning to slow, and so was their customer flow. The chefs thought they would be able to make up the money they had lost during 2008 over the holidays, but that was not the case. Sales were down by 12 percent, and people weren’t having lavish holiday parties, and weren’t spending as much money on luxury food items. “The phone really was not ringing,” says Rayhill. “Everyone we know in the industry was having the same problem. I don’t think this year wasn’t really about growing the business as much as just trying to work smarter and more efficiently to sustain the business and to be able to grow for next year.”

David Gardner, a business administration professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana, Champaign, said that operating a co-op business has some setbacks. “The limitations of a co-op are many,” he said. “Especially making decisions that impact, in this case, all three bakeries. All involved need to make sure they are on the same page about all aspects of the business, and that they’re personalities are compatible as well.” Gardner also said that there is always the chance that one member may go out of business or drop out for other reasons. The company will have to make ends meet minus one, or search for a new member to fill the gap.

For some businesses, a cooperative approach might not be the best idea. But for the Sweet Collective, it’s a perfect fit. They say that on top of discussing your ultimate vision, you have to agree on how you get there.

“The way we’ve gotten there is by being flexible. We talk to each other all the time about ‘That didn’t work, that sort of worked, so how do we fine tune to really make it work?’”

According to a survey by www.score.org, of approximately 627,000 new small businesses in 2008, about 595,600 of them closed. Most new businesses last two years, and half survive five. 

The Sweet Collective has no set plans for the future. One thing they have taken away from the economy’s current state is to be very flexible with their plans. “I think it’s easy to have these lost ambitions,” Rayhill said. “Like a five or ten year plan. But the truth is, I just think things change too quickly. You need to react a lot faster than that, and you can’t stick to these rigid ideas of what your business is supposed to be.”