The simple luxury of a freshly baked cookie is, for many college students, a distant memory of home. Sweets for Your Suite, a new undergraduate business, is a baked goods delivery service that aims to recreate this homemade experience at Columbia.
Sweets for Your Suite’s co-founders, Marilyn He, CC ’14 and finance deputy for new media at Spectator, and Jake Davidson, CC ’14 and Spectator’s online editor, agree that the project is motivated by pleasure. “We want to have fun with it,” He said.
Sweets for Your Suite’s customers can get fresh desserts and snacks delivered to any door on the Morningside Heights campus. “As someone who doesn’t even like to get out of bed, I understand how hard it is to get out of your dorm,” Davidson said.
Davidson and He, who first met as members of the same NSOP group, are now suitemates in Wallach. He has always prepared goodies for the suite, continuing a passion for baking that she has had since she was little.
While He admits to an addiction to baking, it was Davidson who proposed turning her lifelong pastime into a business. After some initial hesitation, He agreed to enter into the partnership.
“It was one of those crazy ideas that we threw out one night and ran with,” He said.
The pair then decided He would serve as the culinary heart of the process, adapting recipes she found online, and Davidson would control the technical aspects of the business, such as website development, money handling, and delivery duties.
After its website went live and fliers were posted around campus, Sweets for Your Suite was officially an operational undergraduate business.
“It was pretty much that easy,” Davidson said of the process.
Orders then began to come in from all over campus. “The first time we got an order from someone we didn’t know, that was pretty exciting,” He said.
Both He and Davidson have previous entrepreneurial experience. He, who studies economics, psychology, and business, founded a charity called “Sounds of Aid,” which organized local benefit concerts. Davidson, a political science and Middle Eastern studies major, has run businesses in tech support and delivery.
They pride themselves on the creativity of their off-the-menu creations, photos of which are displayed in their online gallery. Classics like Red Velvet Cheesecake are seen alongside more unconventional treats, such as a Strawberry Bacon Cupcake.
Though the pictured items are not on the default order form, Sweets for Your Suite is open to custom orders.
“All the things on the gallery page are definitely available,” Davidson said. “If you have no idea what you want, you can send us an email and we’ll work with you to figure it out.” The lemon bars are currently their most popular item, He said.
He and Davidson have no certain plans for the future of Sweets for Your Suite. Davidson said that the next steps would depend on their capacity and time as full-time students.
