Phil Crow and Mark Erickson have two things in common: a wealth of baking industry experience and an entrepreneurial itch. This combination brought the two baking industry veterans together a little more than 8 years ago to launch Creative Occasions Inc., a high-volume cake bakery located in Nashville, Tennessee.

Today, the bakery produces 10,000 to 12,,000 cakes a day, and distributes these cakes to in-store bakeries and foodservice channels throughout the eastern US and west to the rocky mountains. Crow serves as the bakery's president and Erickson handles the company's sales and marketing functions.

The company developed a freight model that said the bakery needed to be located in the Kentucky/Tennessee area. The company selected a 65,000-sq.-ft. building in Nashville because the city is within 650 miles of 50% of the U.S. population. The facility also has 12,000 sq. ft. of freezer space, a necessity to ship frozen cakes nationwide.

Creative Occasions differentiates its products with customized decorations. Unfortunately, this area of production is hard, if not impossible, to automate. As a result, the company stations a series of decorators along a conveyor line to customize each cake.

Creative Occasions production system allows the company to stick to its business plan of providing the in-store bakery market with quality, customized cakes. The company ensures its cakes are perched atop the quality chain by using upscale ingredients in its cake formulas.

The key to producing high-quality cakes is formulating with real butter, using real fruit or mousse fillings in every cake and creating a high-ratio cake. "The combination of these three things creates a pleasurable eating experience.

The company has come a long way in a little more than 8 years by staying true to its business plan despite commodity and supermarket pressures.

"We (Crow and Erickson) were told by other entrepreneurs not to veer from the business plan, "Certainly, we have expanded on the concept in the last couple of years, but we stuck to the original premise of taking the quality of retail bakery cakes to the in-store segment and our strong belief that quality sells."