With 'GOAT' cake, Tampa bakery scores a birthday touchdown

You’ve heard of goat cheese, but probably not goat cake — certainly not the GOAT (as in, Greatest of All Time) cake that was custom-made for Tampa Bay Buccaneers star quarterback Tom Brady last week.

The Cake Girl, a Tampa bakery owned and operated by Kirby and Kristina Lavallee, had the honor of making a birthday cake for Brady’s 45th birthday Aug. 3. Bucs running back Leonard Fournette, a frequent customer of The Cake Girl, placed the order on Saturday, July 30, for delivery Aug. 2.

“It was all hands on deck,” Kristina Lavallee tells the Business Observer. Fournette “was very specific about what he wanted.”

The veteran running back and the Lavallees kicked around a few ideas before settling on what turned out to be a highly realistic goat head complete with lifelike fur, horns, ears and eyes. Next to the head was a caption that read, “Happy 100th Birthday” — a nod to how Brady continues to defy Father Time as he prepares for his 22nd NFL season. Lavallee says she was initially confused but then got the joke. “I was like, ‘You want me to write what? Happy 100th birthday?’ And he’s like, ‘Yep, that’s correct. That’s exactly what I want.’”

Lavallee says the cake took about eight hours to make, from start to finish, with half of that time devoted just to the complex decorating process. The price tag? More than $800, she says. “For a sculpture cake like that, it’s going to cost a lot of money.”

The Cake Girl’s profit margin on a cake like Brady’s is between 30% and 40%; however, because of sharp increases in butter, eggs, sugar and other essentials, the company has had to raise prices to maintain profitability.

“To give you an example,” Lavallee says, “we buy eggs like there’s no tomorrow. A case of 15 dozen a few years ago was $18, maybe $20. Right now, we’re paying $50-$60. We used to pay $80 for a case of 36 pounds of butter; now it’s $160, easily. The prices are crazy.”

The Cake Girl’s growing notoriety among high-profile customers — popular radio host Glenn Beck is a huge fan of its Crave’n Cups — should help it weather price increases.  

“It’s been awesome getting to work with these big names,” Lavallee says. “We’ve seen an increase in the amount of people reaching out, wanting to make sure we’re the bakery that did the GOAT cake, or get prices for future cake orders. It’s been great.”

(This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Kristina Lavallee's name.)