photography courtesy of Maxie B’s

It’s easy to assume that Robin Davis, the effervescent owner of cake haven Maxie B’s, has extensive training as a pastry chef. But the Kernersville native’s path to becoming a gateau goddess started in a curious place: business school at UNC Chapel Hill.

It was there that Davis wrote a paper about the beginnings of frozen yogurt for one of her classes. “By the time I was finished with it, I couldn’t let it go,” she says.

Davis check ed into frozen yogurt franchises and decided to cast her lot with Dallas, Texas-based I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt. Entering into the business early, Davis operated one of the longest-running franchises in the country. But frozen yogurt ran into difficult times and, for survival, Davis decided to diversify her shop’s offerings by selling ice cream as well as yogurt.

Over the years, the shop fell into new lines of business — almost by accident. Davis enjoyed decorating for different seasons; her customers admired her taste and asked where they could purchase similar home accents. So, she also became an outlet for home and garden décor.

One of the best “accidents” of all, though, occurred in 1999 when Davis was expecting her first child and had a craving for a good devil’s food cake. In order to keep her husband from drowning in a sea of chocolate, she sent a homemade cake to the shop and asked her employees to sell it by the slice.

The rest is history. “I have always loved sweets,” Davis explains. “From the time I was a little girl, they told me my eyes were brown because I ate so much chocolate.”

The love of cakes and baking came to her very naturally. “I really do have a very emotional connection to food and I find that most customers do too. That’s a huge part of why Maxie B’s has been so well-received here.”

As she focused more and more on her cakes, Davis insisted on confections that were baked from scratch with natural ingredients, making her an ideal choice for that most-important of confections: the wedding cake.

Davis says she’s honored that customers trust her with their special occasions, and she “tries to take into account those special requests.” In fact, she’s willing to try anything — well, except whipped-cream icing; it just doesn’t hold up.

Along with her talented team of bakers — Elizabeth Volinski, Lisa Pierce, and Olivia Allen — Davis has created organic, eggless, and even vegan cakes.

Maxie B’s turns out an incredible volume of cakes — as many as 15 per weekend in the busy summer wedding season — each one as unique as the brides who inspire them. The team once created a haunted house cake, complete with a crooked black tree on top, for a Halloween wedding. In an interesting twist, the team delivering the cake nearly got lost on a dark road on the way to the reception site.

Wayward travels aside, the company has come a long way. Davis says she once worried that she’d never be able to support one full-time employee; now she has five, one of them a full-time wedding coordinator. The shop has a large network of wedding vendors and they are able to put brides in touch with businesses that match their personalities and needs.

But, ultimately, Davis says she’s most honored that Greensboro has responded so positively to her business. “I like making people happy.”

Maxie B’s is at 2403 Battleground Ave. For information, call 336-288-9811 or go to maxieb.com.