A highly-popular cake and dessert maker is feeding her community some of her sweet treats – thanks to a locker on the side of her house.
Debbie Johnson, who founded her business Dust with Cocoa in Harleston in 2015, has now created The Cake Box.
The unit is filled with cakes, cookies, flapjacks and other tasty treats, with an honesty box allowing customers to pay for items with cash, or via PayPal.
“I came up with the idea from the vending machines which Fen Farm Dairy have in Flixton Road in Bungay,” she told the Diss Express.
“I have supplied cakes and things for their machines for about four years now and I wondered whether I could do something similar on a smaller scale here, as we live on a housing estate in front of a park.”
The 43 year-old, who has a seven-year-old son called Chester, bakes her celebratory cakes and dessert grazing tables for Dust with Cocoa from home and said the feedback to The Cake Box had been amazing.
“It has been going really well,” she said. “People are loving it and word is getting around.
“It is so nice that I can play with what I want to put in there and have that freedom – the cookies seem to the most popular at the moment.
“It makes a such a big difference to a small business when people shop local and buy things from you and enjoy them.
“We already have people coming back and that just shows they are liking what I am putting out there and that is lovely.”
Miss Johnson’s love of baking started by making things with her mum and moved on to cakes after working in restaurants and cafes.
She said she has such pride in what she does and takes a lot of satisfaction from the reactions she gets from people she makes things for.
“It is just the happiness it brings to people and it is so nice when you have spent time creating something for someone and they really enjoy it,” she added.
“That wow factor that people have when they see something that they have not seen before that I have made – it’s a huge thrill for me.”
