Danaris Mazara opened the door at Sweet Grace Heavenly Cakes the day after the governor lifted the Covid pandemic lockdown on ânonessentialâ businesses in late May 2020.
âThank God,â she said. Her 12âyearâold bakery, which had been conceived of when she was lying on her couch staring at the ceiling with $37 to her name, was back in business.i
Eight women were already back at work on Essex Street in Lawrence, Massachusetts, making cakes in the back of the shop. The Sweet Grace bakers turned out cakes, from five silverâfestooned tiers for a wedding to twoâlayered dreamy dark and milk chocolate affairs. On any given day, a cake as grand as a twoâfootâtall Noah's Ark birthday cake, complete with a giraffe peeking over the top, might hold pride of place in the window.
It was a parade of life events, decked out in butter and sugar, for the Dominican community that Sweet Grace served.
Twelve orders came in the day before. But a week usually brought more than 100 orders. Danaris worried whether sales would be strong enough to make the payroll, the mortgage, or payments on the loan she had taken to expand late last year. She recalled what the space looked like before she remodeled it. Its transformation mirrored her own, from bankrupt and nearly out of money to business owner and community leader. The space had been dim and cluttered, with abandoned fixtures and trash left by the hair salon that was its previous occupant. Now it looked like it smelled â soft, sweet, and full of energy. But not as busy as it was before the pandemic and economic crisis hit.
âI think it's normal to be afraid,â she said. âYou don't know what's going to happen in the future. I'm trying very hard toâŚâ she trailed off. âJust wait and keep working,â she finished.
Around the corner, the familyâowned Italian bakery also opened its doors that morning. But unlike Sweet Grace Heavenly Cakes, it had been able to stay in business through the Covidâ19 shutdown because of a historical relic: it baked bread. Somewhere, somebody in the state's bureaucracy had decided that bread was essential. But not cake.
That's not how Danaris saw it. For people who love to dance and sing, and who live for their families and communities, cake is essential. Now, she wondered if everything she had built â for her family, her community, for her workers, and their families â would survive.
Danaris and her husband had arrived in Lawrence in 2002 from Puerto Rico. Born in the Dominican Republic, her mother had moved the family to Puerto Rico when Danaris was a young girl. There she had grown up and met her husband, Andres. Moving to the mainland after they were married, Danaris and Andres started their life in Lawrence, in her brother's attic. The room had no airâconditioning, which meant it was sweltering in the summer, and had little insulation, leaving them to huddle together in the winter. But there were jobs in the factories in and around Lawrence, and the opportunity for a better life.
At the factory where she first found work, Danaris tried, tentatively, to speak a few words of English. âI didn't know that when people eat American chicken, they start speaking English,â mocked the assistant manager on the production line.
She was so humiliated she couldn't bring herself to go back the next day. Instead, she found a language school. The lessons paid off and when she eventually found another job, they were impressed enough to quickly promote her to assistant manager. Right before her daughter, Grace, was born, the Great Recession of 2008â2009 hit. Her husband was laid off from his job at Haverhill Paperboard, a local manufacturer that had been operating for over 100 years. The layoff cost 174 people their jobs and livelihood.
âI was very depressed because I had a newborn baby, something I was waiting to have for many, many years. But I couldn't stay at home to take care of her. I didn't know what I was supposed to do,â she told us.
Sweet Grace Heavenly Cakes was born in that moment of desperation, from the mind of a woman who, typical of today's entrepreneurs, had little in the way of resources, or even a wellâresourced network, to help. The bakery succeeded in the early days because of the help of an unlikely trio of benefactors: an Indianâborn billionaire, a Harvardâeducated tech executive, and a banker from Brazil. They were all engaged in programs to help Lawrence, a city of old and new immigrants, come back to life. In 2018, they had pulled together to help the city recover from a gas line explosion that destroyed 40 homes and caused the immediate evacuation of 30,000 people (from a city of 80,000). Now, as the Covidâ19 pandemic dragged on, Danaris wondered: if things were really bad, could she turn to them for help?
In better times, before the pandemic hit, Sweet Grace's reputation was so good, people lined up to pay $2 just for a cup of the crumbs. Even the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, whose office was menacingly outside the back door, sometimes stopped in for a cup.
âWe have many customers coming from far, far away to get our cakes,â she said. âDominican people, you have to know us. We are always celebrating.â
Danaris made it through seven weeks of pandemic closure by using her personal savings to pay both the mortgage on her house and the payments on her building renovation loan. She paid her employees â four of whom were women with children still back in the Dominican Republic â for a week. But she was stretched thin, both financially and emotionally.
She had been right before to trust in her ability to build a business. Her prayers had worked in the past. Now, she trusted they would again.
The New Builders
Danaris is a New Builder. She is one of the next generation of entrepreneurs defining the future of American business. These entrepreneurs are increasingly Black, brown, and female. Many are older than entrepreneurs of previous generations and, as a result, today's entrepreneurs are older than many people realize. They are talented innovators and businesspeople with an extra dose of grit. They're passionate about what they do, and their motivations are often more complex than our current definition of entrepreneur allows. They're apt to be driven by the idea of contributing to their community as much as by the idea of profit, though they often believe they can do both.
The entrepreneurs of today are a much broader group than the entrepreneurs that dominated our old mindset, the highâtech founders of Silicon Valley and Boston. Very few New Builders have businesses that fit the idealized Silicon Valley model of fastâgrowth, highly profitable (or at least highly valued) enterprises â but out of their ranks, we will find winners in the postâpandemic recovery. You'll find them in places as varied as Main Streets, redlined communities, and technology parks everywhere. And they come up with ideas for their businesses not tinkering in the fabled garages of Silicon Valley but in teenagers' bedrooms and around kitchen tables. Some are building technology businesses with the goal of hyper growth. Most are not. If we want them to win in greater numbers, we need to understand better who they are and how to support them. Our idea of entrepreneurship has been overtaken by a particular myth â that important entrepreneurs are White, male, and Ivy Leagueâeducated, and that the only truly worthwhile businesses are softwareâdriven companies with the potential to grow into huge businesses. That image doesn't reflect the reality of entrepreneurship across America, or the fact that small businesses are not just a sentimental cause â they are critical part of our economy. It's time to take back the idea of entrepreneurship to include the incredibly rich and wide variety of businesses that are being started in America today. By not seeing New Builders, not supporting them and helping them thrive, we risk letting go of the entrepreneurial edge that has long set America apart from other countries.
The New Builders are out there. They're an invisible army, working to further themselves and their communities as they turn their business ideas into reality.
