Today we’d like to introduce you to Ian Wilson.
Hi Ian, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I liked cheesecake and I always wondered why we never had it at family gatherings since my family always had baked goods at them. I asked my aunt why and she said “cheesecakes are too hard to make” I didn’t think that was a good reason so I set out to make one and it turned out pretty good. I kept bringing them to family gatherings and I would take some to my friends and people kept asking me to sell them. In 2020 I started selling them on Instagram and I was doing well and my older brother came to me and said what if we open a coffee shop and sell cheesecakes out of it. So later that year we opened a coffee shop in downtown Houston and we sold cheesecakes and many other products and as time went on I learned that the process for making cheesecakes was hard to teach to staff especially since it wasn’t our core business. It was an after thought our focus was coffee and breakfast items. So we eventually pulled them off the menu. I kept seeing all these dessert places go viral for making different desserts with a bunch of crazy flavors and I said I want to do that but it be cheesecakes. They had cookies they had donuts they had cupcakes but no one had cheesecakes. It’s a product I love and believe in. I made a simple business plan not real in depth and sent to a few people Leke being one of them and he was immediately on board. We created an in depth business plan and came up with start up costs for a store front and mapped everything out and pitched it to different potential investors some showing a lot of interest others showing none and eventually majority flaking to the point we wouldn’t raise enough money to start. We put it on hold for a little bit until October of 2024 we said you know what let’s just start. A lot of those places we had seen when you look at their story they started out of a home or an apartment with a product they loved and believed in and then along the way figured out how to get to where they are at why not us. Leke was 100% on board and agreed for us to use his apartment and here we are months later we have a commercial kitchen and we putting out flavors weekly things seem to be moving in a great direction and all because we decided to say why not us.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Every journey has its bumps, and ours has been no different. We’ve wrestled with finding a kitchen we could truly call home, fought to make our name known in a crowded world, and even stumbled through the growing pains of setting up the right tools just to serve our customers better. Every struggle has been a chapter in our story — a reminder that behind every cheesecake and every smile, there’s a lot of heart, hustle, and hope.
We’ve been impressed with Bites Cheesecakes, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
At Bites Cheesecakes, we believe that little things can carry big dreams. We specialize in premium, personal-sized cheesecakes each one crafted with the same excitement and creativity you find in today’s fun dessert spots. Like others, we love to keep things fresh with new weekly flavors, but what truly sets us apart is the heart and hustle it takes to do what we do.
While many turn to cookies, cupcakes, or donuts quicker, easier paths we chose the road less traveled, cheesecakes! Cheesecakes demand patience, precision, and an incredible amount of care. Every batch we create is a labor of love, a process that can’t be rushed or faked. But when you finally take a bite, you’ll understand why we do it because what we create is something extraordinary, something that simply can’t be compared.
More than anything, we’re proud of our quality. We don’t believe in shortcuts. No fillers, no unnecessary additives just real, honest ingredients made from scratch, just the way it should be. And when you taste it, you’ll feel the difference in every single bite.
What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
The most important lesson we’ve learned is you just have to start. We talked to investors and we’ve had some people flake and we just decided you know what we are going to do this ourselves and just acquire things along the way. We knew we had a great product and we knew we had a lot of unanswered questions but that’s the beautiful thing about being an entrepreneur is the journey of figuring it all out along the way. Week after week month after month we learn more about who we are and what we are capable of as we continuously build out our brand and continue to over customers a premium product.
Pricing:
- $8 a cheesecake
Contact Info:
- Website: https://bitescheesecakes.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/wearebites
- Facebook: https://Facebook.com/wearebites
- Twitter: https://x.com/wearebites
- Youtube: https://YouTube.com/wearebites
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/bites-cheesecakes-sugar-land
