New Custom Cake Shop Opening in Midtown Village Next Week

A new specialty custom cake store is set to open in Midtown Village next week, owner Komeh Davis told the Tuscaloosa Thread Tuesday morning.

Davis said she launched her business, CakEffect, in 2009 and opened her first brick-and-mortar store in Homewood in 2011. In 2019, Davis saw she had outgrown her first location and relocated to a bigger space in Hoover. Now, the black entrepreneur has her eyes on expansion and plans to open a second storefront in Tuscaloosa's midtown village later this month.

"We had customers all the time asking us if we did business in Tuscaloosa so we started doing some research and discovered it was actually a really strong market and made a lot of sense for us," Davis said.

She said they began talks about leasing the Midtown Village storefront next to Edible Arrangments in April, but the COVID-19 pandemic slowed the process down and forced Davis to delay her grand opening until next Friday, October 23rd.

When the doors finally open and the ribbon is cut, Davis said Tuscaloosa will have a new one-stop-shop for find mind-boggling custom cake and much more.

"Obviously our cake designs are the main draw, but when you walk in you're going to get a warm, welcoming experience and get to take in that fresh, baked goods smell," Davis said. "We're going to make sure we've got treats like cinnamon rolls and cupcakes going in the store and switch up the variety so you don't see the same thing when you walk in every day."

The custom cakes are a kind of art, Davis said, and designers must expertly sculpt the cake into delightful, unexpected shapes before carefully "painting" it with colored edible icing, all while making sure the finished product doesn't just look good -- it has to be delicious.

"There's just this wow factor when someone sees a design and says 'Oh my gosh, is this really cake?' and cuts into something that looks like a hamburger or a camera," Davis said. "But whether you're serving kids at a birthday party or adults at a wedding, it's got to taste good, too."

To try a CakEffect masterpiece for yourself, be sure to check out their new location when after opens in Midtown Village next Friday and help Tuscaloosa welcome its newest business to the Druid City.