My Heavenly Sweets Bakery in NC delivers Puerto Rico to customers
Puerto Ricans Liz “Lily” Rodríguez and her husband José Rodríguez have been running their own bakery and restaurant My Heavenly Sweets in Fayetteville, North Carolina since December 2018, selling deserts, pastry’s, sandwiches, bread and even pork chops just to name a few.
The couple, who have lived in several states, as José Rodríguez is in the US Army, have also been distributing deserts and pastries for some nine years to some 60 restaurants and ten supermarkets across North Carolina.
“We started with two employees, and today we are 22,” Liz Rodríguez said in an interview with News is my Business.
“My Heavenly Sweets is an artisan dessert sole owner and wholesale distribution company that was founded in 2006 in Orlando, Florida. Our vision is to produce the best home-style desserts using only the finest ingredients,” she said of the bakery/restaurant located near the Fort Bragg Army Base in Fayetteville.
“We have more than 115 bakery products in display,” she noted.
When the couple purchased the space where the bakery/restaurant now stands they had to invest some $150,000.
“I have to say, the investment was pretty big, because when we got the space, it was completely destroyed and the owners didn’t want to fix it,” she explained. “They told us that if we wanted to fix it, we had to do it, so we took on this adventure.”
The couple is now looking to expand operations in Puerto Rico and then in Florida.
They are looking to open shop in the Los Colobos sector in Carolina.
“We’re visiting Puerto Rico in two weeks to check out the different spaces that are available in Los Colobos,” she said, while adding that she hopes to open the Puerto Rico bakery/restaurant by 2023.
After the business in Puerto Rico is up and running, then the couple will be looking into different places in Florida, to expand there as well.
Among the clients the couple currently serve in North Carolina are Puerto Ricans that live in the state, and sometimes customers drive down from Virginia, New York, and Florida.
“The majority of our customers are Puerto Ricans that live in the states, but we also receive a lot of Koreans, Americans, and Afro-Americans,” Liz Rodríguez added.
The first Saturday of every month, the restaurant celebrates “Guavate Day,” and this past Saturday for example, some 200 plates were sold.
On “Guavate Day” My Heavenly Sweets sells traditional “Guavate”-inspired dishes, such as “arroz con dulce,” or Puerto Rican rice pudding, macaroni salad, “lechón” or roasted pork, plantains and fried pork chops, just to name a few.
Meanwhile, the entire bakery/restaurant was designed and decorated to look and feel like a visit to Old San Juan, making the customers experience more pleasant because they “feel as if they were at home,” she said.
“When we expanded the facility, we completely decorated it to make look and feel as if you were in Old San Juan,” she said. “There are people that have started crying when they visit, because they feel as if they were visiting the island.”
