A Sweet Place Bakery planning expansion with new Dudley location

A Sweet Place founder Beverly Hilaire (right, with husband and children) is planning a move to a larger location in Dudley Square.

Not many people would do what A Sweet Place founder Beverly Hilaire has done with her business dream. She spent two years successfully running her candy, baked goods and sweets store in Fields Corner, then shut it down, hoping for a tastier bite of the pie in another, bigger location.

Small businesses come and go in city neighborhoods, so seeing A Sweet Place close up its doors is nothing new.

Only in this case, the business was not exactly failing — in fact the story is just the opposite. Hilaire felt A Sweet Place had hit its ceiling in the 950-square-foot Dorchester Avenue location, so she is negotiating a lease on a 2,000-square-foot store in Roxbury’s Dudley Square.

Hilaire experienced what is often a common problem for small businesses — the business is just too small and there is nowhere to go but down once you hit its limits.

“I realized the business needed to be bigger,” Hilaire said.

When she opened A Sweet Place in April 2012, Hilaire, like all small business owners, worried about the feasibility of her plan. But two years in, the store’s sales proved there were customers who wanted a neighborhood shop to sell candy, baked goods and sweets. Part of her business-owning dream was fulfilled.

What was missing, though, was a vision for a business that could sustain other employees and continue to grow in both offerings and sales. This wasn’t going to happen in the Fields Corner location.

Hilaire’s sister Brenda Riggs is co-owner of A Sweet Place, and her mother and her husband all are involved in the business. While the rest of the family is happy to help out when they can, Riggs still has to work full-time otherwise, as the business cannot sustain the two owners. None of the store employees can really view the gig as a long-term prospect, either.

All of this disappoints Hilaire. She wants her sister to be able to focus on the business full-time as she does and she wants its employees to feel invested in the business as well.

“I need a wider profit margin in order to hire and retain a quality staff,” she said. “If you want to retain people you have to offer something better. That is what I want to do.”

The candy and sweet shop business is something that Hilaire plans to retain, but she also wants to add a bakery, coffee bar and ice-cream shop counter to the expanded A Sweet Place in Dudley Square. In addition, the expanded floor capacity will allow the company to really kick off and support online sales.

Hilaire believes all these additional revenue streams will allow the business to hit its true potential.

Having grown up in Roxbury, not far from Dudley Square, she is also thrilled to come home with her business. And it doesn’t hurt that the high-traffic Dudley Square area’s population of nearly 50,000 offers a lot of potential for walk-in business.

“It is a work in progress. It definitely will be great to see it all turn over,” she said.

Hilaire has a background in retail and worked for Filene’s for 15 years. She has also managed a Starbucks and a small, privately-owned café. In addition, for the last 15 years, she has worked as a self-employed real estate agent.

While Hilaire and Riggs used their own money to start A Sweet Place, they need outside funding for expansion and after being turned down for several standard small business loans, they decided to get more educated on the process to improve their chances of getting the needed cash.

Hilaire took part in a Center for Women & Enterprise 12-week course last spring called the Community Entrepreneurs Program, which she credits for getting her business plan in shape — not only giving her the confidence to make the move to a bigger location, but also making her business more attractive to lenders.

A Sweet Place also cashed in on $5,000 during the program when Hilaire’s business plan won a pitch competition that concluded the course.

The money might just be a drop in the bucket for what A Sweet Place needs to make its move, but Hilaire has taken her award-winning business plan and lined up two lenders willing to make the loan that had previously eluded her.

Edwidge LaFleur, a business support specialist at Center for Women & Enterprise, says Hilaire’s experience with the program is similar to that of a lot of entrepreneurs who take it. Namely, they finish with more business knowledge and greater confidence that their businesses can succeed.

“The connections, networks and friendships that were developed in the course of the program are also things graduates say are invaluable,” LaFleur added. “Most see real possibilities of their dream project becoming a reality, having acquired needed tools and expertise to bring their project to fruition.”