By: Angie Haddock
“All you have is all you need,” is the life lesson entrepreneur Mignon François learned as she turned the $5 she had to feed her family dinner for the week into a multi-million-dollar bakery brand. With no experience and no recipe for success – or cake for that matter – her path was truly made from scratch. In this memoir, Mignon shares her story of climbing out of a life of continuous upsets, struggle, and lack to building a legacy that would bless her and future generations.
The Cupcake Collection is a Nashville staple, so of course I had to jump on this one! And, because she’s been around town for a minute, I’d read parts of Mignon’s story before – in snippets, in local magazines and the like. But this fleshed-out version held many surprises to me.
Ms. François grew up (mostly?) in New Orleans, where food is a way of life. So I had assumed that her skills behind the oven came from her family. And ultimately, they sort of do, but not directly.
She had originally thought about being a doctor, but found herself pregnant with her first child while still a teen. Only a year later, she married a man 11 years older than her, who already had 3 kids of his own. To say her life didn’t go as planned would be a huge understatement.
After many moves, more kids, infidelity, car repossessions, and having their phones and electricity turned off more often than they were on… the François family landed in Nashville. And initially, they were on the same track here. But the tenacity that grew here started with finding a home in the Germantown area, and finding a way to afford it with all the financial problems on their record. They bought the house – and the eventual first location for their cupcake empire – by first flipping another house for the seller. They did not get paid money, they got paid in him financing the next house for them. And it was also a fixer-upper. But it got there, little by little.
Mignon’s next big move – the idea to start a bakery business – was going out on an even shakier limb. Because she did not have a love of baking, or know how to do it! She had heard on the radio that people were having bake sales to pay off debts, and just decided to do it. (She did call her grandma for a little advice.)
Now, here’s where I have to put some caveats out for potential readers. This is an amazing story, by all accounts. And the author gives all the glory to God for it. Again, this was not new to me, as I’d heard parts of this story before. But her love of that radio show – Dave Ramsey’s – might irk some people. (His reputation among the locals here is… notsogreat.)
And truly, the whole book is written from a very religious perspective. Ideas and struggles alike are presented as teaching moments from God to Mignon personally. That language might not be for everyone, so I just wanted to give y’all a head’s up.
Now, The Cupcake Collection has locations in both Nashville and New Orleans, and ships cupcakes nationwide. They also do wedding cakes, pop-ups, have merch… you name it. It’s a well-established brand that sprang from an unlikely place. But obviously the owner – who practiced baking at home for two years before she started taking her goods into the world – had just the tenacity and spirit needed to take on this endeavor!
This one comes out today, and I was able to read an advanced copy thanks to the fine folks at Books Forward.
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