Spilling The Beans: Tale Of Crumbs
Bakery Founders Sean and Denon Moore Go Out On Top
By Cara DeGette
GPHN Editor
This month the wildly popular Cake Crumbs turns 10 years old. Its owners and founders, Denon and Sean Moore, celebrated by selling the café and bakery they built from scratch.
In fact, they’ve divested of their empire. In addition to shedding Cake Crumbs on 22nd and Kearney, and the Crumb Café on Holly south of Park Hill, they sold their commissary building at 28th and Fairfax (which will soon be demolished as part of the Park Hill Commons redevelopment of the east side of that block).
They sold the cupcake truck, named Clementine, which was largely credited for vaulting their company into a successful venture.
They’re not exactly sure what life holds for them next. They are exhausted. They are taking the summer off.
Here’s a testament to the popularity of this Park Hill couple and their creation. When you want to meet them to talk about Cake Crumbs, you can’t actually meet at Cake Crumbs. Too many people would stop by the table to say hello, and offer good wishes and best of lucks, and the interview could never be finished. So instead, we met at the Blunozer café, another wildly popular spot opened by two sisters with Park Hill ties in 2015 at Colfax and Ivy.
“Park Hill has been so good to us,” says Denon. “It seemed like a big shock, but I knew when we started the bakery that we had a ten-year [plan], and July 1 is ten years.”
For the Moores, the days often stretched from 4 a.m. to midnight, every day of the week. When they opened the bakery in 2007, they weren’t able to take a family vacation for two years. They went to Breckenridge, and the world blew up. A guy back home, a customer, didn’t like the specialty cake he had ordered, and hammered Cake Crumbs on social media.
“It ruined our vacation,” Moore says. “It was also our first experience being shamed on the internet.”
In 2010, three years after the opening of the café and bakery, Moore put together a business plan in just 72 hours. The idea was for a food truck, in this case, a cupcake truck. Sean Moore credits the instant success of that cupcake truck on the fella with the sparking personality who drove the truck around, trailblazing the way with social media, to promote where the truck would be every day. (Yes, that guy happens to be named Sean Moore.)
The operation has about 25 full and part-time employees, whipping out about 10,000 cupcakes a week, as well as full-strength cakes, cookies, scones and other breakfast and lunch items.
But the past year has been a rough one. Sean Moore has had some health challenges, as has one of his parents. The Moores started reassessing the frenetic pace of their lives. Their sons Carter and Andrew are 13 and 15 now, and have grown up with their dad behind the wheel of a cupcake truck and mom at the helm of the bakery. The couple decided to sell, and go out on a high note.
In May, another Park Hill resident, Katie Magner, took possession of Cake Crumbs. Shortly before that, the Moores broke the news to the staff, and to their longtime regular customers – including a group of retirees from the neighborhood that gathers for weekly coffee klatches at the restaurant. “They solve all the world problems at that community table,” Denon says.
“Cake Crumbs was our heart and soul for 10 years,” Denon says. “We couldn’t be more thankful that a local family bought it.”
They used the cash to pay off debt, and to take the summer off to regroup.
“We seriously have no idea,” says Denon, of what might come next (in a previous life she was a mental health counselor). But one thing is for sure. For 10 years, the couple has worked long, sometimes intense, hours side-by-side. Is there a chance they plan to launch another joint venture?
“No!” they both say in unison, and then laugh together. It’s not as if they don’t like working together. But, “when we get home at night,” Sean says, “we want to be talking about two separate days.”