Mother-daughter team Geraldine Keough and Lindsay Smith were living their dream of running their own bakery, The Dessert Ladies in Stirling, N.J., when the pandemic hit. Focused on creating dessert bars for corporate clients—such as Goldman Sachs, Mercedes Benz, the NFL, Prudential and Northwestern Mutual—they suddenly saw orders slow to a trickle, as business events all but shut down.
“Initially, it was a big shock to our system—we had events being cancelled every day, every hour,” says Keough.