A local sweet shop is taking its business (back) on the road after a fire destroyed its brick-and-mortar space late last year.
Hip Hop Sweet Shop, one of several businesses destroyed in a December fire in a Russell neighborhood strip mall, is hoping to start serving customers again soon as a mobile bakery. If all goes well, owner Lafesa Johnson told The Courier Journal, the mobile sweet stand will be up and running by the first week of March.
This isn’t the first time the business has been on the road. Johnson said he had previously worked out of the mobile bakery, a remodeled school bus she bought in 2018, but it broke in 2020. After the fire about a month ago, though, she said it “made sense to fix and renovate it and use it to continue our business.”
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The fire was “absolutely devastating” for Johnson and her partner, the baker said. The couple had been working on renovating a neighboring unit to expand the brick-and-mortar location as recently as September 2022. “Business was growing rapidly,” Johnson said, and the shop was “gaining momentum.”
“We also survived the COVID epidemic whereas many, many other small local businesses didn’t, so to lose it like that was extremely hard,” she said in an email.
Hip Hop Sweet Shop had been a staple in Russell since its opening, serving up confections like “Do it for the Culture Cupcakes,” “Bangin’ Banana Pudding” and “Foxxy Brownies” alongside “Candy Girl Slushies” and “Shake It Fast Cake Shakes.”
Fire and Desire, a soul food restaurant, and Kendrick’s Kuts, a barbershop, were also destroyed by the fire.
Johnson, who has been baking professionally since 2007, said the Russell community is “already familiar” with the mobile bakery, but they will serve other neighborhoods in Louisville as well. The feedback she’s gotten from residents throughout the city has been “encouraging,” she said, which gives her optimism about the reopening.
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“We were, however, the only bakery West of downtown so the community was devastated with us, and we’ve received countless amounts of heartwarming messages, social media comments, emails, prayers, etc. from the community encouraging us to reopen in Russell Johnson said in the email.
The shop has plans to open as a mobile bakery on March 3 and stay open until Oct. 29, when Johnson said the crew takes a winter break.
“As of now, that’s our sole focus, getting the bus back out to the community,” she said.
Hip Hop Sweet Shop has raised around $6,500 from 190 donors on a GoFundMe, which can be found on the fundraising website.
Contact reporter Rae Johnson at [email protected]. Follow them on Twitter at @RaeJ_33.