The coronavirus has put a damper on many of our activities, including high school graduations. Schools from one end of the country to another are holding those graduations online due to the pandemic. Many of the seniors had waited for years in order to make that walk across the stage and pick up their diploma. In an effort to make life a little better for those seniors, a bakery in Minnesota is stepping up to the plate.
Better Homes & Gardens is reporting that Hanisch Bakery and Coffee Shop, a shop in Red Wing, Minnesota, has already shipped over 1000 graduation cakes for seniors throughout the state of Minnesota. “I just figured I needed to do something cool for these kids, and the thing that I relate to graduation is a cake,” Hanisch told the magazine, “So we started baking.”
Hanisch was only planning on making about 200 cakes for the graduating seniors at Red Wing high school. After people heard about what he was doing, however, he continued to get nonstop requests to send more.
Last Friday we delivered Prescott Graduation Cakes to The Ridgetop. Amy made sure these kids had an extra special day for Graduation!! #hometownpride #smalltownpride #classof2020 #keepyourdoughlocal
Posted by Hanisch Bakery and Coffee Shop on Monday, June 8, 2020
“It’s been awesome. It’s been so fun to tell the story about how it started, from just making cakes for my own town to how it’s grown,” Hanisch told PEOPLE. “Now I’ve seen other bakeries doing it, too. It’s been really cool.”
More than 1000 personalized cakes have been donated so far. Those cakes have been sent out within a 45-minute radius of the bakery. They aren’t making a profit from the project but any money that was collected from the cakes goes toward keeping the bakeries 21 full-time employees paid during the pandemic.
“It didn’t really hit me until we delivered our first cake and a faculty member started crying,” he said of the cakes’ impacts: “It’s definitely brightening up a pretty cool time in their life.”
The bakery is also open for local orders.