One on One: Danielle Luisi of Sweet Pea’s Bakery
Through Sweet Pea’s Bakery, Danielle Luisi provides scratch-made desserts for some of St. Louis' best restaurants. Photos // Madison Sanders
Danielle Luisi simply thought she was making a birthday cake for a friend; little did she know, it would lead to a career.
After graduating from The Culinary Institute of America, New York-based Luisi moved to St. Louis, where she met fellow chef Ashley Shelton, who was – and is currently back again – working for the award-winning chef Lou Rook III at Annie Gunn’s. Rook tasted the birthday cake and subsequently offered Luisi a job.
She immediately got to work, creating the pastry program at the esteemed restaurant, where she worked for seven years before launching Sweet Pea’s Bakery in Maryland Heights, Missouri. The wholesale bakery provides delectable treats to local restaurants that don’t have the capacity for an in-house pastry chef, including Annie Gunn’s, Carmine’s Steak House, Lombardo’s Trattoria and DD Mau; you can also find select sweets at Straub’s Markets. As the holiday season gets underway, Luisi says she has a few special desserts up her sleeve as well.
Why did you decide to launch Sweet Pea’s Bakery as a wholesale bakery instead of a storefront? I started this on my own. I don’t have investors, and I don’t have partners. I started doing it while I was still working full-time – it was the smartest way to build up the business. The plan is to [add a] café and then always have wholesale. Usually people start with retail because it brings in the most income, but it also takes the most capital. I kind of did it the old-school American-dream way, slowly paying for everything myself, so I own everything. I’m going to have to wait a couple of years to get there – and obviously the pandemic totally put a stick in the bicycle wheel.