
4 minute read
A Carrot Cake Legacy: An Interview with Brandon Adams ’06
from Kent Quarterly
by Kent School
A Carrot Cake Legacy
BRANDON ADAMS ’06 CARRIES ON HIS PARENTS’ BELOVED BAKERY
BY MEGAN TADY
There are pictures of Brandon Adams as a baby rolling around in flour and sugar. His parents’ bakery, the renowned Lloyd’s Carrot Cake, has been ingrained into him. It’s no surprise, then, that upon the sudden passing of his mother, Betty Campbell-Adams, last year, Adams and his sister, Lilka, have stepped in. Now, they’re running operations at the storefronts in East Harlem and Riverdale, the Bronx, where customers line up for a slice of their father’s recipe.

“THERE’S A LEGACY that needs to be maintained, and fewer things that are more important to me,” Adams said, who used to ride around with his father delivering wholesale cakes to restaurants and businesses. “I’ve watched my dad and now my mom dedicate their entire lives to this.” Adams’ father, Lloyd Adams, died in 2007.
In his younger days, Lloyd was a 6’6” basketball player who played for the University of Wisconsin and the University of Rhode Island before he “had a cup of coffee in the NBA.” He could also make a mean carrot cake, which his friends requested every time they came over to watch a New York Knicks game. Eventually, a friend suggested he sell the cakes, and Lloyd took a sample slice to the legendary soul food restaurant Sylvia’s in Harlem.
“By the time he got home, they were calling him for another one,” Adams recalls. “It took a lot of fortitude to say, ‘I have this product, and rather than just selling it on the street, I’m going to sell it wholesale to other restaurants and businesses.’ And that’s how it all started.”
Soon after, Lloyd opened his flagship store in Riverdale, followed by another store in East Harlem. The cake is also now available in shops like Zabar’s and ships nationwide through the curated food platform Goldbelly, as well as Lloyd’s own website. Adams is tight-lipped about the secret family recipe, passed down by his paternal great-grandmother, but whatever’s in those carrot cakes has created a loyal following. It’s not uncommon, Adams says, for patrons to declare “I drove from Georgia to get here,” or for customers to place orders from, say, Minnesota.
“Not to poke our chest out, but our carrot cake really is the best,” Adams says. “It’s truly an artisan process. We grind up eight hundred pounds of carrots a night that go fresh into the cakes, which helps keep them very moist. The quality and consistency of the product is what connects customers to us.”
But also, Adams says, people connected to his parents—particularly his mother, Betty, who was at the helm

Adams shows his Kent pride at the Riverdale location in front of the numerous articles written about the award-winning bakery.
for thirteen years. “She truly tapped into what it meant to have good customer service,” he says. “I cannot ever think of a time when my mom turned somebody away, even if we were closed. A lot of times people came up to the door after hours asking, ‘Can I get something?’ It was never, ‘No.’ It was always, ‘What do you need?’” Losing his mother last year was a terrible blow. Adams had a career in sports marketing, working with companies like Nike, and he quickly stepped down from his job at Game Seven Marketing and into an operational role at Lloyd’s Carrot Cake. Taking after his dad, Adams also had his own illustrious basketball career, even playing professional basketball in Colombia after attending and playing for Manhattan College. In fact, it was basketball that brought Adams to Kent his Fifth Form year, where he played for the late Coach Don Gowan ’66, who had a profound impact on his life. “Coach Gowan was an amazing person,” he says. “I have so much love for him and the entire Gowan family. They were my surrogate family on campus.”
He says the two years at Kent were “one of the best experiences of my life. I’m a New York City public school kid, so it was an adjustment. There was some culture shock. But being on campus with your classmates at 16, 17 years old, you’re growing up together and you make strong connections. I really matured, and I grew in my basketball game as well.”
That maturity and poise has served Adams well as he transitioned to running a food business in the middle of a pandemic. Lloyd’s was one of the lucky establishments that didn’t take a hit—people yearned for comfort food in the midst of the lockdown. But more recently, both shops experienced flood damage from Hurricane Ida, and were forced to temporarily close for repairs.
Back up and running again, Adams says he and his sister are beginning to look to the future, tapping key partnerships, developing their brand online, and enhancing their shipping capacities. “We’re going to look to continue to grow the business in the best way possible, while at the same time honoring our parents’ legacies,” he says.
For more information, visit www.lloydscarrotcake.com
