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The Call Her the Cake Pop Lady

This local office manager-turned-baker has brought her tasty little cakes-on-a-stick all the way to an Emmy swag party for Hollywood celebs.

Photo Kevin O'Riley

When Springfieldian Deb Lumos lost her job in November 2008, she found herself struggling to find new employment in an economy that certainly wasn’t making the hunt easy. When her sister, Diane Harrington, suggested at Christmas that she take up cake decorating, a craft she had dabbled in previously, Deb registered for a class at Hobby Lobby to brush up on her skills. What followed was a nine-month whirlwind of flour and sugar until finally, in September, she handed a cute little cake pop to one of her TV idols at a celebrity swag event in Beverly Hills.

Three weeks into her cake decorating class, Deb’s friend sent her a recipe for cake pops (an almost-bite-sized chunk of cake, candy-coated and served on a stick). They were tasty, Deb says, but they were tedious to make. She started playing with them in the kitchen and giving them to friends. Before she knew it, the friends had dubbed the treats “crack on a stick” and started encouraging her to sell them.

By June, Deb had launched cakepopco.com with the help of her friend Brian Whitaker, and then the orders started pouring in. Locally, people ordered batches for events like bridal showers. But nationally, curious consumers just wanted to taste the cake pops, and they placed orders as well.

But it was the 10 September days that Deb spent in Beverly Hills that have been the most exciting for her fledgling business. In California, Deb was peddling her products at tastings with friends’ groups, at a taping of the Jay Leno Show and (most importantly) at the Think Pink Emmy Lounge, where celebs went to get pampered before heading to the Primetime Emmy Awards in New York City. It was there that she handed out about 300 cake pops to people like Deidre Hall, a Days of Our Lives star of whom Deb is a huge fan.

“We were outside,” Deb says. “It was warm, and the cake pops were getting melty. But no one cared. You gotta love anything on a stick.” She watched Shar Jackson (K-Fed’s baby mama) hide in a corner to eat her cake pop in camera-free privacy, and then raving about how much she loved it. Deb gave a pop to Nancy Cartwright, the woman who does the voice of Bart Simpson. When Deb told her she was from Springfield, Cartwright launched into her Bart voice for the rest of the conversation, saying, “I know you! You run the cake pop store down

the street from the power plant.” Deb’s son, Josh, had joined her on the trip, and he was pulled aside by Project Runway: Season Two competitor Nick Verreos as an example of fall fashion for an online women’s magazine. The range of people who got their hands on a cake pop was wide and varied.

It was also in Beverly Hills that Deb ran into actress Alfre Woodard, from The Family that Prays with Tyler Perry, in line at cupcake shop and offered her one of the cake pops. Woodard was impressed and asked for Deb’s contact info, so she could send a dozen to Tyler Perry and tell him to send a dozen to Oprah Winfrey.

Do we sense a future free gift for the entire audience? Maybe, but at press time that order hadn’t yet been requested. That doesn’t discourage Deb, though. The exposure was amazing enough. She has already been asked to bring her cake pops to the gifting (read: swag) suites at other events, such as next month’s Sundance Film Festival. The only problem is the cost. Deb promised herself she’d start this business without debt, and attending the events is far from free. Baby steps.

Today, Deb is trying keep her new little business growing with the help of her family: 22-year-old son Josh, 17-year-old daughter Emily, 20-year-old daughter Brittney and her husband, Darryl Lumos. Her cake pops can be purchased online at cakepopco.com, at 1984 Arcade and at Rendezvous Coffee Lounge. She says she sees a storefront in her future, but nothing is set in stone yet.

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