FOOD/ENTERTAINMENT Adrienne Holland: Owner of Adrienne & Co. Bakery and Cafe HOME LIFE Originally from Niagara Falls, New York, Adrienne moved to Kentucky after college to be closer to family. “My parents were pastors, and they got transferred to a church in Owensboro,” she says. After briefly living in Louisville, she put down roots in Jeffersonville, Indiana, where she lives with her husband Howard, and 11-year-old daughter, Gigi. THE SWEET SPOT Adrienne set out to be a teacher while making cakes on the side but quickly realized the classroom wasn’t for her. As demand for her creations grew, Adrienne decided it was time to set up shop. “It had snowballed to where I had no food in my refrigerator — it was all cake — and there was always a mountain of dishes when my husband got home. And there wasn’t enough room in the apartment. I would cover my washer and dryer in plastic wrap and use that as my workspace.” Adrienne & Co. bakery opened in downtown Jeffersonville in 2001. With multiple blue-ribbon wins at the Kentucky State Fair and a growing customer base that includes Muhammad Ali, Adrienne expanded her offerings and added a Floyds Knobs, location several years later. A third location recently opened in New Albany.
HAVING HER CAKE Adrienne was creative as a child and loved art classes. She sees cakes as her art medium and does the more complicated decorations herself. Wedding cakes are her exclusive personal domain. “I like the whole process, from the beginning until the end, because everyone coming in for a wedding cake consultation is happy. The whole family comes, including the groom. He may not want to go to visit other vendors, but he’ll come to taste cake. AND EATING IT TOO Taking care of her health includes watching what she eats, but temptation is always there. “Sometimes as I’m baking or carving, I’ll put some pieces in a box and stick it in the refrigerator. I’ll be really good all week, then I kind of save it up like a squirrel and eat it all over the weekend,” Adrienne says.
I like the whole “process, from the beginning until the end, because everyone coming in for a wedding cake consultation is happy.
BEYOND DESSERT Coming from a large Italian family where food was important, Adrienne knows her way around the kitchen. “My grandmother taught me how to make fresh pasta, and my father taught me how to make a mean meatball. I can make basically all the Italian dishes — chicken parmesan, gnocchi, pizza, my own sauce — but I don’t really cook at home since we cook everything at the restaurant. My husband always says that for having a bakery and a restaurant, we never have any food in our refrigerator.”
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THE FAMILY THAT BAKES TOGETHER Adrienne and her brother had lived and worked together in Louisville. “The first job that we took out of college was at Ermin’s bakery. They promoted him to manager and me to front manager, and we kind of ran that bakery for a year.” The ‘Company’ in Adrienne & Co. actually refers to the entire family. Adrienne’s brother is coowner, and the Floyds Knobs shop is run by their mother and stepfather. Over the years, more family members came aboard. “My daughter is kind of a fixture at the bakery,” Adrienne says. “I worked all through my pregnancy, and when she was born, we made a playroom for her there. Now she’s 11 years old, so this summer we’re going to give her little jobs to do at the bakery. She’s actually pretty good at decorating cakes.”
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THE SHOW MUST GO ON Of all her projects, Adrienne remembers one that almost didn’t happen. “Kings Island commissioned us to do something cool for a big event, and we decided to make a working volcano. We rigged it up with fish tank tubes and air pumps so it would bubble red corn syrup. It worked fine at the bakery, but when we got there, it didn’t work. So my brother and I sat under the table during the event and took turns blowing into the tube, switching off when one of us was going to pass out. It actually worked out perfectly. We’d blow into the tube really hard to get it going whenever we heard people approaching, and we could hear all the ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs.’ And nobody ever knew we were under there.”
CHILDHOOD PASSION Adrienne grew up around cakes. “My mom was a schoolteacher, but she (made) cakes out of the house when I was a little girl. She used to also teach cake decorating classes, and I would go with her as a kid to all of the sessions. By age 11, I was teaching women how to ice cakes and make roses. I always knew that I loved to do it, I just never knew I could make a living at it.”