Taste of the Tropics: Sweet Dames founder offers confections inspired by her family's Caribbean heritage
“I’m a let’s just do it sort of person … I am willing to take risks to make things happen. To see the fruits of my labor – I know at the end of the day it’s going to work out. I enjoy people experiencing my cookies. It’s my purpose.”
By Cheryl Baehr
Genelle Drayton vividly recalls the spectacle her Uncle Cleve would create when he came to visit her grandparents, Henry and Daisy Dames, from the Bahamas when she was a little girl. Though their house was always the center of their circle’s entertaining universe, it was especially festive when her uncle would come see them in Queens, New York, bearing gifts from the islands, especially the coconut cookies, which caused quite a stir.
“He’d come with these coconut cakes, and they were the highlight of the visit,” Drayton says. “We all wanted them, and it got to the point where my grandmother had to hide them because we tried to eat them all in one sitting.”
As the founder, proprietor and baker of Sweet Dames Artisan Confections, Drayton has been causing a stir or her own with her signature macaroons and cocomallow sandwiches, which she has been baking since 2011. Known for their rich coconut and Caribbean-inflected flavor, her artisanal offerings have become the basis of a brand that began as a labor of love and evolved into a thriving retail and special-order business.
Looking back, Drayton can see how she ended up as the proprietor of her own sweets shop, even if she did not intentionally set out on that path. If her grandparents’ home was the hub of her family’s entertaining universe, Drayton often found herself in the center of it. When she was just 10 years-old, Drayton got her first 100-person catering gig after a shrimp dish she cooked for her family dazzled her mom’s friends. From that point on, Drayton was always the one in her friend group to cook and host events, not only because it came naturally to her and she was good at it, but because she had a genuine passion for creating memorable moments for others.
Still, she did not pursue hospitality as a career – at least not at first. After attending college in Virginia for human development and family studies, Drayton returned to her native New York City, where she got a job working for the Editor in Chief of TV Guide. When an article she pitched got featured in a publication for NASCAR, she made connections with the sporting organization that she was able to parlay into a job in administration that evolved into a role hosting corporate clients in the sponsorship department. Eventually, she was promoted to NASCAR’s partnership marketing coordinator, which had her leading the organization’s hospitality, event planning and corporate entertaining department.
For ten years, she managed all things hospitality-oriented for NASCAR and was tasked with many responsibilities, including putting together corporate gift packages for sponsors. Bored with the standard hospitality giveaways available, she decided to start filling the care packages with her own handiwork. The reception made her rethink her path.
“Everyone loved them, and I was being asked to make macaroons and custom cakes,” Drayton says. “I took culinary classes and started getting really deep into it and finally decided that I’d been there 10 years and needed to move on. That’s when I decided to take the leap and start my own baking business.”
In 2011, Drayton launched Sweet Dames as she continued to work in hospitality consulting. By 2013, she was ready to fully commit to her bake shop dreams and has never looked back. Drayton admits it has not always been easy; the transition from a steady, full-time job to a life of entrepreneurship has had its good days and bad. This was especially true when the Brooklyn commissary where she’d been since the bakery’s inception unexpectedly closed two and a half years ago, leaving her and the numerous other tenants without a place to work. Fortunately, she was able to make arrangements to temporarily use her friends’ commercial space before uprooting her operation to Washington, D.C. in 2018.
The COVID-19 pandemic has presented its own share of challenges for Drayton and Sweet Dames. When she moved to Washington, D.C. two years ago, Drayton was determined to open a storefront that would complement her online and retail business. Though that’s been put on hold for the time being, Drayton has not let it slow her down in other ways. In fact, she’s seen the unprecedented time in the hospitality industry as a chance to reflect on where’s she’s been and where she wants to go.
“In the beginning of COVID, it was the unknown, but at the same time, I thought, “OK, the world is shut down; how are you going to take advantage of that?” Drayton says. “The biggest thing for me was to challenge myself to not come out of this thing in the same position. Whether that was making updates on the website that I needed to make or reaching out to contacts that I’d been meaning to reach out to – the line items that are important, but always move down the list because something outranks them – I chose to be diligent and make time. I do not want to waste this time.”
Drayton is indeed not wasting any time when it comes to adapting her business to the pandemic-altered food and beverage landscape. Though she’s made her name offering large macaroons and cocomallow sandwiches, she’s recently added bite-size macaroons to her repertoire in three different flavors: pineapple coconut, salted caramel and chocolate-dipped coconut. The additional products are something she’s wanted to offer for a while, but the pandemic accelerated her plans since she saw demand for more economical options.
However, one thing COVID-19 hasn’t changed is Drayton’s certainty that she is exactly where she is supposed to be and that she is filled with zero regrets about taking the leap to follow her dreams. For her, the reward has been worth all the risk.
“I’m a let’s just do it sort of person,” Drayton says. “There are times when I say, ‘Let’s figure this out,’ but what has enabled me to leave a job is that I am willing to take risks to make things happen. To see the fruits of my labor – I know at the end of the day it’s going to work out. I enjoy people experiencing my cookies. It’s my purpose.”