RileyCakes Brings Vintage-Styled Bakery to Cleveland in November

Riley Moodry stands in front of a brick storefront, a bright vintage-style cake in one hand and her phone in the other, filming another entry in the running video diary of opening her own bakery.

Moodry is the 21-year-old owner of RileyCakes. For the past five years, she has been making custom cakes, cupcakes, cookies, brownies and pastries, then posting the results to more than 20,000 Instagram followers.

She baked as a kid, but her real start came at Young Chefs Academy, where an instructor asked the 14-year-old whether she wanted to be a chef.

“I love to bring people together through food, and I love to be able to be part of people's special moments through something as small as a cupcake or as big as a 10-tier wedding cake,” Moodry says.

At 16, Moodry began selling to friends and family members. She then attended the International Culinary Arts & Sciences Institute, where she helped chefs run public cooking classes.

“I fell in love with the teaching part, because sometimes we would get to assist the actual students as well,” Moodry says.

RileyCakes now offers classes where Moodry guides groups through decorating a 6-inch cake.

“I'm just so excited to teach people how to decorate in different themes, and I want to do other classes that are about baking basics because I think it's something that everybody should know,” Moodry says.

The orders outgrew the renovated garage she'd been working out of.

“I didn't need my name on a building to feel accomplished and be proud of myself,” Moodry says. “But now it's just grown so much to the point where I need extra hands, and a big thing I'm doing is cake classes, so I need the space for that.”

The Kirtland storefront on 7621 Euclid Chardon Road wasn’t originally a bakery. Moodry and her father, who is often featured in her videos, have spent months on the renovation, working the color of RileyCakes into the white interior.

Moodry now balances orders, classes and construction.

“Even when I'm working like 16-plus-hour days, seven days a week sometimes, I'm not burnt out from baking,” Moodry says. “I just love it. It's kind of like my escape and the way I express myself. I just get so excited to create people's visions.”

Moodry is known for creating vintage-styled cakes with bright colors, showered in edible glitter.

“I really fell in love with whimsical cakes, there's just so many ways to do it,” Moodry says.

Taking her vintage style a step further, Moodry is giving her bakery a 1950s diner aesthetic where her creations will look right at home displayed on a red-and-white countertop.

While the bakery won’t be opening until November, business continues as normal for RileyCakes, with Moodry bringing her customers’ dream cakes to life.

“I enjoy it, to see their face light up when they see the cake, and it makes me so happy that I was able to make their dream cake come true and bring it to life. That's another reason why I love what I do: to just see how happy people get over a cake,” Moodry says.

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