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By David Walsh

PHOTO: Ivey Childers in front of her new IveyCake location in Brentwood.

By LANDON WOODROOF

Several hours after IveyCake opened at its new Brentwood location next to The Perch on Monday morning, a near-continuous succession of customers filed in and out of the cheerful, pink building.

Some of them did not know it was opening day and just happened upon the place while driving down Franklin Road.

Others were fans of the store from its original Franklin location or its previous stint off of Old Hickory Boulevard. They were eager to try their first cupcakes at the rebranded Brentwood location, and several of them knew the owner, Ivey Childers, by name and greeted her warmly.

“We’re loving it that you’re over here,” one told Childers happily.

The Brentwood store is the latest phase in the development of Childers’s business, which saw its Franklin retail location open in 2008. That store is closing this Saturday so that Childers can focus on the Brentwood one full time.

In preparation for the opening, Childers has come up with a new logo for IveyCake and new, stylish to-go boxes for customers. The bakery is also adding some new offerings to its menu. Customers need not worry about the updates, though. The cupcakes that they clamor for are staying the same.

With her new location, Childers was looking for several things. She wanted a place with good visibility, plenty of parking and character.

She calls the location next to The Perch “the best of both worlds.”

The bakery is actually connected to The Perch. Since IveyCake only has limited seating, that allows customers to come in, grab a treat and then head over to The Perch to get a cup of coffee and enjoy their cupcake.

The cupcakes, of course, are what has made IveyCake so popular. Childers started baking around 2000 after she finished college, and she has devoted countless hours since then to perfecting her craft. That know-how, combined with some good old-fashioned TLC, are the secrets to Childers’s success.

“They have to be made with love, and they have to be made with ingredients that.…it’s not cheap to make the cupcakes I make,” she said. “I make them with all the best ingredients. I never use a box mix. I don’t do shortcuts. Our recipes are, you know, 14, 15, 16 lines long. They’re very lengthy. But most of all they have to be made with a lot of love and attention.”

It is not enough, though, for Childers’s cupcakes simply to be delicious. She demands more from her product.

“Not only that, they have to be beautifully presented,” she said. “That’s really important to us as well. It looks great and tastes even better.”

That eye for presentation is apparent in the look of the new IveyCake location. Muted pinks and other soft colors provide a welcoming and soothing atmosphere for those picking up their cupcakes. Likewise, the simple but elegant new logo and design on the store’s to-go containers almost make you hate to think of throwing one away. There is also a newly redesigned website.

To go along with the cosmetic changes, Childers will also be adding some items to the IveyCake menu. While the bakery has always done special order cakes, it has never sold cakes in the store. Starting soon, though, it will begin selling six-inch cakes to go along with its extensive offering of cupcakes. Between 12 and 20 cupcakes from the main menu will be available every day at the store, with six seasonal options rotating throughout the year.

Staff at the new location wear shirts that hint at another facet of Childers’s business. While careful planning and hard work mean a lot, sometimes inspiration steps in unannounced. That is the case with one of Childers most popular cupcakes, Big Dreams.

The shirts say “Follow your sweet dreams.” For some that might be just a nice saying. For Childers, it is literal.

“A friend had asked me to make a strawberry cake,” she said. “I’d tried different tactics. And I just threw out batch after batch because it either didn’t have enough strawberry flavor or just wasn’t the right consistency…I just couldn’t quite get it right.”

Childers went to bed with the cupcake on her mind and began to dream.

“I literally thought out step by step in my head, I just saw it happen,” she said of the recipe behind her Big Dreams cupcake. She could not explain it, but it happened.

Customers will have a chance to order Big Dreams cupcakes or whichever one else they want at the new IveyCake location from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday.

“It feels good in here,” she said. “Everything just seems right.”