A Taste of More

A Taste of More

“From Kanye, to cupcakes...”

By Sarah McPartland

Chicago, IL- Every Tuesday at the stroke of midnight Chicago cupcake fans log on to Facebook and wait in suspense for Patty Rothman to post photos of her cupcakes. Everyone who tags themselves in these photos gets to head on down to More Cupcakes at One East Delaware in the Gold Coast of Chicago and get a free cupcake. More cupcakes has over 8,000 Facebook fans and even more offline.

Patty Rothman, the owner and creator of More cupcakes is the method behind this madness. Rothman who looked very professional in an all black-fitted suit is a mother of five who was not always in the baking business.

 Before she opened More in 2008, she was in the music industry for 16 years. She previously owned one of the major recording studios in town, Hinge Studios. Rothman said they had recorded with Kanye West before he went really huge in the music industry.

She said More really started as an idea to make the leap from the music industry to opening a cupcake store. “From Kanye to cupcakes, that’s what we should entitle my autobiography”, Rothman said to her kids and staff with a laugh.

Rothman said she had been baking her whole life but the business idea really all started with the help of her friend, Henry Adaniya, who is a major chef entrepreneur in the area. She said they were sitting down at dinner one night and the topic of cupcakes came up and how much they had risen in popularity. “He said what could be better than a cupcake for dessert, and I said a cupcake for lunch and then a cupcake for dessert, and he said that’s a really good idea you should run with it.”, said Rothman.

Two months later, she brought the idea up with Henry again and asked him to be her consultant for the business. From that moment, the concept of More was born and “The concept was can we take a cupcake and make it more.”, she said. The idea was to create something you would see on the finest menus at the finest restaurants. “Can it be breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert… what can it be?”, Rothman said.

Every Tuesday night, Rothman posts 10 or more photos, not including other contests she posts on her page, and gives all of the fans who tag themselves in the photo and all contest winners a free cupcake.

As for her Facebook promotion and her fans, she said “I really look upon [my Facebook fans] as my ad budget, everybody always says to me it’s a lot of product you’re giving away, and it is, but I look upon my dollars as there’s no better way to sell my product than to taste it, because once you taste it, you’re hooked.”

She said when the tagging first began, there weren’t nearly as many fans as there are now.  Rothman now has over 8,000 fans on her More Facebook site, and tagging is a more competitive game because of her growing fan base. Rothman says she tries to answer all of her fans comments herself because she really does appreciate them.

Thinking back to Rothman’s music studio days, she said she tries to apply the same concept of owning a small cupcake business to owning her small music studio. She wants to be able to provide a unique boutique experience and to be able to compete with the other larger businesses in town.

The One East Delaware Place location is Rothman’s only More shop right now, but she says she has been contacted by many people asking her to open more shops. Rothman says, “I just have to make the leap.”

More also has a mobile cupcake truck, which she said is a great tool to figure out where her market is. She said it is convenient to use the truck and find out where her cupcakes are popular before committing to a store in a new location. Rothman says she knows that a new store is coming, but she still has to commit to the project, and with five kids that’s not an easy feat.

More with no doubt has been growing rapidly in popularity. “We have made the O list with Oprah, so we do a lot of shipping....”, Rothman said

She said her cupcake business differentiates from many others because More uses the finest ingredients and they never freeze their products so they are always fresh. Rothman said many cupcake stores just use the same type of cakes with all of their flavors but More pairs different types of cake to specific frostings and flavors. Rothman said they have many different types of chocolate and vanilla cakes to pair with her frostings.

Rothman said these practices can be taxing on the kitchen but they are important in order to facilitate the gourmet experience. She said on a slow day she has a minimum of 17 flavors in the store. More cupcakes range from around $3.50 to $6.50 individually.

“You know what’s really fulfilling… it sounds trite to say it makes people happy, but it does, it’s a cupcake how can you hate it?” Rothman also said she does a lot of weddings and said, ‘These women have been dreaming about this day since they were seven and they’re choosing me and my product, you know, on a day that has to be perfect for them, that’s like, really a compliment.”

She said she has about 35 people on staff and that owning More really is a 24 hour a day job. Rothman designs most of her cupcakes at home and is inspired by every day foods. Her goat cheese and pear cupcake was inspired by one of her coworkers who was eating a goat cheese and pear salad for lunch one day.

Rothman just did her first food network show, Ultimate Eats, for her goat cheese pear walnut and her BLT cupcake. The show will air on the Food Network on the 3^rd week of June. She said her BLT cupcake was the one that launched her and within a month of having it out she had about 30 mentions in the press.

While Rothman spoke about her story, she let in multiple customers after she had closed and gave them cupcakes.

Sarah Tavares, a 22 year-old Chicago resident, said “This is my first time getting anything from More, but my friends rave about it all the time… there are just so many interesting flavors.”

Walk into More, and if you see a curly red haired woman with a bright personality talking a million miles a minute to all the customers, you’re probably looking at Patty Rothman, the woman who created More.

Sources:

Patty Rothman herself

http://leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com/thestew/2008/09/more-than-plain.html

www.morecupcakes.com 

From Mundelein to Loyola: Women empowerment through research

LOYOLA UNIVERSIY CHICAGO- In June, 1991 the all female college Mundelein joined forces with Loyola University Chicago. It’s legacy of empowering women through knowledge still lives on in the Loyola community today through the Gannon Center for women and leadership. The center resides on Loyola’s campus on the second floor of Piper Hall as does the office of the Gannon center’s director, Janet W. Sisler. The Gannon center may not take up a lot of space on campus but Sisler has proved with her involvement that they have made and will continue to make an impact on the Loyola community and it’s neighbors.

            “We really are into developing the leadership of women across the Loyola spectrum.” Sisler said that the Gannon center has a ten-year plan in place that includes reaching out to other Jesuit institutions throughout the nation, and then throughout the world. She said that she wants the Gannon center to work with these institutions in order to become a collaborative center of leadership for women with an eventual global impact on society.

            The Gannon center is prominent throughout the Loyola community in three ways. They offer professional research and internship programs for undergraduate students, graduate students, and alumni students.

            For undergraduates, the center offers the Gannon Scholars program, which is a mentorship and leadership program that is offered to a select 20 undergraduates every year. The program provides scholarship aid, mentoring, and service opportunities for undergraduate students. Sisler says that the program is really focused on how the service opportunities reflect and build upon students understanding and development of their own talents and skills. Sisler points out that it is the students understanding of their own talents that helps them to provide better service to others.

            Another program the Gannon center sponsors is the WISER program. The WISER program, Women In Science Enabling Research, is offered to five undergrads that are interested in becoming researchers for science, math, and technology. “These five young people work with a researcher here at the university all summer… and they work on really cool projects that have real significance”, Sisler said.

One student who worked in the WISER program last year did extensive studies on tracing the chemical elements of antibacterial soaps in our water. The research done by the student showed that our ground water still has residue of antibacterial chemical elements even after it is filtered in a water filtration plant. The antibacterial elements that still remain in the water are thought to have detrimental effects on human life. Sisler comments, “What’s happening is that it’s reducing our own opportunities to develop immune systems that are vibrant and robust.” She also said that this will be looked at and possibly confirmed with further research. Sisler said, “Sometimes science thinks they’re doing a great thing, but they don’t look at the long term ramifications.”

            The Gannon center prides itself on the WISER programs ability to provide real research opportunities for students and also to help them develop a relationship with researchers. Sisler says the hope is that this opportunity may stimulate their interest in their area of research for the consideration of a life long career. According to Sisler, the students who have participated in this program have an excellent track record of getting PHD’s.

            “We want to focus on encouraging women to go into areas in which women are still pioneers and obviously scientific research is still an area of pioneer activity for women.”, Sisler said.

            A new scholarship program is on the horizon for the Gannon center called the Johnson scholars program. The program is named and financially supported by an alumna from Mundelein college, Adela Johnson. The program will focus on researching into even more socially important justice areas than they have done in the past. Sisler offered an example to what a student might research in the program such as why there are not a better percentage of women CEO, CFO, or COO’s in fortune 500 companies. This program will also connect students with professional researchers and possibly a business professional such as a current female CEO.

            The Gannon center has many professional contacts from the work they have done over the past years but Sisler is also a great aid for connecting students with research professionals. “I’ve worked in leadership capacities in the Chicago area for the last 30 years so I know a lot of people, but we are also going to be talking to our board of trustees and have them recommend people in the profit, non profit, or the public sector who would be a really good match for their interest and their research activity”, Sisler stated.

            Graduate students also benefit greatly from the Gannon center with vast opportunities for internships. This fall, one of the Loyola graduate students in higher education is going to apply findings from a professor in the school of education who has done extensive research on the most effective strategies for developing leadership in collegiate women. The student will use this professor’s research findings to help evaluate the Gannon centers leadership development programs and find ways to improve them.

            Sisler said, “In a program like ours where we have scarce resources, we have to make sure we maximize the opportunities to really develop synergy between programs that we sponsor.”            Anytime a Gannon center research project can be done with help from another professional or program within the Loyola community is a great example of how the center develops synergy and uses the resources at hand, comments Sisler.

            The Gannon center also provides programs for Loyola faculty members. “Every year people send in proposals for us to fund in terms of leadership opportunities. This next year we’ll be funding Dawn Harris, who is in the school of business, who will be doing some more of that fortune 1000 analysis”, Sisler stated.

            The Gannon center also does a visiting scholars program for post doctorates that are moving forward with research in areas that have not been explored in depth before. This spring a woman from the Netherlands, Veerle Draulans, will be “studying the interception between women and the practice of religion as change agents within social and public arenas”, according to Sisler. She has done extensive research in the past in the field of bioethics and the social transformation of women. Draulans will be searching into the archives the Gannon center holds in order to complete this mission.

            The Gannon center not only provides research opportunities for Loyola students and neighbors but also puts on educational and inspirational programs for them throughout the year. One such program Sisler mentioned was one which the Gannon center celebrated the success of four retiring city council women from Edgewater, Uptown, Lincoln Park, and the Beverly areas. She said these women are the first to endure criticism within their field of work so the Gannon center wanted to turn the tables and celebrate all the productive work they had done in public service throughout their careers.

Another program that Sisler mentioned with pride was one such that the Gannon center worked in 6 high schools with 80 at risk young women in the northwest side of Chicago. The program focused on women who live in poor families with an income of less than $28,000, also with women who live in neighborhoods where the high school drop out rate is higher than the graduation rate, women who live in places where gangs are active and recruiting, and also students who tested below average on high school standardize tests. According to Sisler, what the Gannon center did for these women was worked with their families to provide them necessary resources to flourish, and then worked with the girl’s high schools in order to provide the girls the tutoring they needed to succeed.  All 20 girls in the program last year all graduated from high school and 100% of them went on to college.

            “It is really possible to develop leadership within young people if you provide the framework and the infrastructure when it’s done in a just way, a way that promotes human dignity, and in a way that really helps them maximize their liabilities”, Sisler said.

            Sisler was hired as the director of the Gannon center last summer. She said one of the most fulfilling aspects of the job is being able to “collaborate with people to develop and implement programs that enable people to find their gifts and to use those gifts in service.” She said, “Every day I get to do something good... all these fires are being kindled every day.”