Sherry Imperial said her company, Frost with Us, one of six businesses coming to the Brookfield Shops retail incubator at Eight Corners in June, traces its roots back to when she was in high school.
“My first job ever was being a cake decorator for Cold Stone Creamery,” she told the Landmark. “That was in high school, and I did that because I wanted to do something that I truly thought was fun. I didn’t think anything big about it.”
Now, years later, Imperial owns and runs her own company. While you won’t be able to buy a picture-perfect cake from the Frost with Us storefront, you will be able to pick up cake decorating kits to make the magic yourself. The kits come with a cake, bags of frosting and other decorations, and no matter how your creation turns out, the cake is yours to enjoy.
The business will also offer cake decorating workshops, where Imperial will teach the nuances of the field, from frosting a cake to creating your own art with a piping bag.
After she left that first job to go to college, Imperial studied interior design, a field she worked in for 10 years as a way to flex her creativity while earning a living.
“During that time, [my] passions still came up. They don’t leave us, and in that respect, I made cakes for family,” she said. “I wanted to learn how on earth you can take all these powder products, like flour and sugar, and then eggs and milk and create a stack beauty. Like, how is that possible? That’s what I did, so I started making wedding cakes for people.”
At first, she said, she didn’t charge people much because she valued the experience she got from each order. Once she had her first child, though, Imperial said she wanted a level of flexibility that her work as an interior designer couldn’t provide, so she made the career switch. Then, for three years, she ran a cake baking company under the name Velvet Cake Lounge, making cakes to order out of her home.
“I imagined it being this very cool, swanky thing. I would sell more exquisite cakes, like a patisserie,” she said. “I enjoyed it, and I loved it, but I just was not connecting in the way that I wanted to.”
She said the one-off nature of the business left her wanting more out of the human interactions she experienced.
“I would show up to these people’s grand weddings, and then it was over, and that was it. Occasionally, some of them [would] come back … but I would get to know them through their social media. I wouldn’t get to know them on a personal level.”
Even when she did pop-up appearances at farmers markets, Imperial said she felt disconnected from her customers, which made her reconsider the business. After some soul-searching, she realized she didn’t want to abandon her dream business entirely, so she decided to rebrand as Frost with Us last fall.
“I want people to do this with me, and I think that’s why I created Frost with Us and gave it that name, so it’s more of a communal effort,” she said. “It’s a creative movement, I guess, and a way to get people to connect more. I just didn’t want to sell a product and then never see that person again.”
Just a few months later, when Brookfield announced the retail incubator program, Imperial said she felt like “the stars were aligning.”
Before rebranding, “I was trying to purchase a spot in Brookfield, actually, but my business partners dropped out of it at the very last minute,” she said. “When I saw that Brookfield had [the retail incubator], I was like, that’s exactly where I wanted to buy my spot … Like, ‘Sherry, this is where you wanted to be in the first place, and you could still have that. It’s just not in the way you thought it was going to be.’ So, I took that as a sign.”
As a Hickory Hills resident, she said Brookfield’s proximity to her home made the program appealing, but there was another aspect of the village that drew her in.
“I have a thing for small towns with trains running through them. I don’t know what it is, like my Hallmark dreams or something, but I feel like, in those small-town downtown areas, you feel the warmth of the town so much,” she said. “There’s always something going on. There’s always some sort of parade or celebration happening, and it’s always super exciting to be part of that.”
After she applied, Imperial said a family tragedy threw a wrench in her plan to present before the jurors who selected the six businesses at the Brookfield Shops.
“I had to go to the Philippines for my father-in-law’s wake,” she said. “I had a personal emergency that I needed to attend to, and I also had this big, huge thing in my life that I personally wanted to accomplish, and that was difficult … I looked in my toolkit. I put on my little business hat, and I said, my sister’s the perfect person to do this. She’s heard every single idea I’ve had about these businesses.”
She said she waited up through the “nail-biter” 12-hour time difference until she finally heard good news from her sister: “She’s like, ‘I think we killed it.’”
Her sister told her the jurors had their own fun using the cake kit prototypes she had created for the presentation; she said the joy they felt is the same feeling she hopes the rest of the Brookfield community can find at Frost with Us.
“If they enjoyed it, there’s no way a kid wouldn’t enjoy it. I feel like it speaks not only to a child but to someone’s inner child, so it’s really good for anyone at any age,” she said. “It’s very simple. You could easily grab the bag and squeeze and see what happens, you know. There’s not a lot to it, but you could make a lot of it if you wanted to. You definitely have options; you can mix colors if you wanted to and just let your creativity fly … No one of these are going to be alike, and I feel like that’s the most exciting part about it.”
