Decatur, GA — Decatur resident Kelsey Deleshaw is 16 years old, and ever since she can remember, she’s always been into cooking and baking.

“When I was like really, really little, my mom had an out-of-the-house cake business, so I kind of grew up in the kitchen,” Deleshaw said. “I always liked to play restaurant when I was a lot younger. I would create menus for my family, and it would have stuff like pimiento cheese sandwiches or maybe like peanut butter and jelly – basic stuff like that. I had a little toy cash register, and now it’s kind of funny. It’s like the real thing.”

By the real thing, she means her baking business. After posting on Facebook to see if Decaturites would be interested in ordering some baked goods, her business quickly took off.

Kelsey has a long menu of items for sale, including four different types of cakes, four different types of cupcakes, and three different types of macarons. Her macarons, carrot cake, tres leches cake, and croissants have been her most popular items – and when she says popular, she means it.

“Right away, after I posted on Facebook, I got, like, 20 emails in the first 30 minutes. And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ I didn’t really know how to handle it all,” Deleshaw said. “So, my mom answers the emails, and she sorts out the pickup and delivery, and I do all of the baking. Basically, I wake up early in the morning and just bake all day. Tomorrow is the only day off that I have.”

For perspective, Deleshaw said that croissants take a full 24 hours to make. For these orders, she works for about half of the day in the afternoon and then wakes up in the morning to freshly bake them and run them off to her customers.

Decatur resident Becky Vinson saw Deleshaw’s post on Facebook and ordered 20 macarons for her and her husband, which are her “absolute favorite treat.”

“I think it was fabulous. She delivered them to my front door, and she texted me the exact timing. I just thought it was perfection,” Vinson said. “And the packaging is the cutest little pink bag – they were in a white box with a clear top with a ribbon. The whole thing was just fantastic.”

For Deleshaw, she sees her baking business in Decatur as an opportunity to further her future.

“I’d like to have a coffee shop and a restaurant when I’m older, so this is actually helping me gain more experience for that,” Deleshaw said. “It’s showing me how things run, which is pretty cool.”

Experience is definitely something she has already at 16 years old.

Deleshaw made it to the final round of the Food Network’s Kid Barbeque Championship at 13. She’s served as the brand ambassador for Avocados from Mexico, where she made cooking videos, wrote recipes, and attended a big produce convention for them in New Orleans to perform cooking demos.

In addition, she was a brand ambassador for Every Kid Can Cook, a non-profit that teaches kids about healthy cooking. She made cooking recipes and videos for them, too, and won their yearly, national cook-off two years in a row.

And about two years ago, Deleshaw traveled to Pennsylvania and performed a cooking demo for a local news channel.

One of the reasons that Vinson decided to order macarons from Deleshaw was because of her young age.

“I’m self-employed. My husband’s self-employed, and I love to help small business owners and people,” Vinson said. “I just thought it was great because I could tell by the post that she’s a teenager. I admired her, and I was impressed that at her age, she would put it out there.”

Deleshaw’s talents don’t stop with food, though. She’s does voiceover work and she’s also an actor, starring in short films, radio ads, promotional videos, and more. She recently did a voice-over about Coronavirus for the state of Alaska.

To learn more about Kelsey, check out: https://www.facebook.com/kdeleshaw/

To place an order, send an email to: [email protected]

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