The Cake Bar’s Angie Wells Mixes Heritage, Heart, and Vegan Ingenuity
For Angela (Angie) Wells, founder and owner of The Cake Bar, searching for vegan bakeries became the motivation to create a home for authentic vegan baked goods.
“So I was just having a hard time finding a delicious vegan cake,” says Angie. “So I started kind of playing around at home. And I remember I made a cake, and it was completely flat, but because it tasted so good, everybody ate it. So, you know, I just kept trying. And then during the pandemic in 2020, I made my own birthday cake. And I finally got it to look nice. And I shared it with friends and family, and they loved it. So they started hiring me to make their cakes for their special occasions.”
Angie’s passion comes from her grandma and her mother, who moved from Bainbridge, Georgia, to Michigan when her mom was 13, bringing their expertise in southern cooking to raise Angie.
“And so they brought all of their Southern cooking and baking to Michigan. And that’s what I grew up on,” says Angie. “We rarely ate out. We were always cooking at home, making enough for the week. And then we went to church on Saturdays, and after church, we would always have a big lunch. And there’d always be pound cake or coconut cake, caramel cake, some type of dessert, sweet potato pie. They were always baking, and they taught me just being around them all the time and being inspired by how much they enjoyed cooking for their family.”
Because of growing up learning how to bake and cook, and based on the support of her loved ones, she started sharing her creations on Instagram and receiving requests for gluten-free and vegan options for her desserts, which eventually led to opening her own brick-and-mortar store.
“And just through offering vegan desserts, you end up meeting people that maybe are vegan because they have allergies,” says Angie. “Maybe they are lactose intolerant or have nut allergies. And then people started asking for gluten-free options, and it just kind of expanded from there. There was a huge, like, gap in the market for delicious vegan desserts, and it just really took off. So I had to get a commissary kitchen (commercial kitchen space) so that I could start working with restaurants.”
After opening her commercial kitchen, she noticed a “for rent” sign from a popular vegan bakery, met with the landlord to sign the lease, and officially opened on Aug. 12, 2023. Reflecting on her bakery’s second anniversary in August, Angie said there were several obstacles that delayed her grand opening.
“… When I first started and signed the lease, and we went under renovations about a month after I signed the lease, the contractors gave me a deadline,” says Angie. “So I used that to create my grand opening date. And I had to push it back twice because it was so hard to get all the permits and licensing approvals from building, zoning, signage, the fire department, and them almost saying that my oven wasn’t approved. … There were so many setbacks from the city, and permitting was such a struggle. They were just completely backed up. That working with all of these different sectors within the city was just time-consuming, exhausting, and frustrating. But even with pushing the grand opening back a couple of days, I think the day we opened, it was perfect timing.”
The Cake Bar’s grand opening was a success due to Angie working with a social media director to promote Cake Bar. When they opened, they had a line that wrapped around the corner with customers coming into the store for four hours straight.
Located in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, The Cake Bar features a variety of cake and frosting flavors along with other desserts such as jumbo cupcake du jour, peanut buddies, zebra cakes, and ice cream delivered from Best One Yet, located in Longmont, Colorado.
Angie’s goal is to create more availability to allergen-friendly and vegan desserts across the U.S and also the world, and she has been working with a produce developer to create her own line of cake mixes and frostings. She also wants to open additional locations, but has found challenges in partnering with a co-packer, which is a company that produces, packages, and sometimes labels products on behalf of another business.
“I have been working with the product developer to create my own line of cake mixes and frostings that can be sold retail and wholesale globally to areas that still do suffer from allergies and intolerances, But don’t have access to cake mixes and frostings to make that happen,” says Angie. “And working with a co-packer to produce my collection of cake mixes and frostings will allow a seamless transition to scaling multiple locations because when you think about, like, McDonald’s, one of the reasons they’re successful is consistency.
Angie has earned various accolades, including being named as one of the 40 under 40 Business Leaders by the Colorado LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce in 2025, and The Cake Bar being ranked on PETA’s “Say ‘I Do’ to PETA’s 2025 Best Vegan Bakeries That Make Wedding Cakes.”
When asked about advising aspiring business owners, Angie says having a belief in your vision will carry new entrepreneurs through difficult times and into success.
“So I guess my advice to somebody looking to start up, is it has to be a passion, whether or not it’s something that you were raised on or something that you fell into,” says Angie. “Passion is what’s gonna get you through those tough moments where there’s not enough money or there’s not enough help. Having a passion and a purpose for what you’re doing is the foundation to any successful business.”
Photo courtesy of The Cake Bar
