Melissa Ben-Ishay
Melissa Ben-Ishay (born Melissa Bushell) is the creator, President and Chief Product Officer of Baked by Melissa, a privately held multi-million-dollar cupcake company headquartered in New York City. Early life and education. Melissa Bushell was born in Hillsdale, New Jersey on January 11, 1984. After graduating from high school, she attended Syracuse University, in Syracuse, New York from 2002 to 2006. She earned a Bachelor's of Science in Child and Family Studies. Throughout childhood, she was passionate about baking and would bake for family and friends. Career. Early career. After graduating university in  2006, Ben-Ishay first worked as a sales assistant at Telerep Inc. from August 2006 to March 2007. Following this position, Ben-Ishay worked at Deutsch Inc. as Assistant Media Planner from March 2007 to June 2008. She was not passionate about this job and her work output was not strong as a result. At the age of 24, Ben-Ishay was fired from her position, partly due to the recession in 2008 but also due to her lack of passion for the work. In an interview years later, she commented on her experience being fired and said, “Failure is  important. You learn humility, self-responsibility, [and] the importance of a positive approach to challenging situations." During her time in the advertising industry, she was already baking her signature tie-dye cupcakes for friends, colleagues, and family, so after being fired, her first instinct was to go home and bake with the goal of potentially starting a business. Baked by Melissa. Company inspiration. After being fired, Ben-Ishay's brother, Brian Bushell, encouraged her to bake cupcakes - one of her favourite pastimes and an impressive skill. To console herself she made 200 cupcakes and sent some of them with her  friend's little sister who was working an internship at Alison Brod PR. Brod loved the cupcakes and put Ben-Ishay in touch with her caterer. The caterer also really enjoyed the cupcakes, and after taking a bite of each flavour, asked Ben-Ishay if she could make them a single bite, sparking inspiration for Baked by Melissa's signature cupcake style. Creation of Baked by Melissa. Two weeks after being fired, Ben-Ishay booked her first event and started to create the company with help from Bushell. Other help came from their business partners (and friends) Matt Baer, Ben  Zion and Danny Omari. Bushell was the CEO of Baked by Melissa for 8 years. The logo, a tie-dye cupcake, was established at the early stages of business development with help from Baer. The iconic cupcake is still the logo today. Ben-Ishay wanted the company to be called “Baked” but her brother insisted that it had to have a personal tie to make the company memorable. Thus, “Baked by Melissa” was born. Mini cupcakes became Baked by Melissa's brand after that first caterer's original request for bite-size cupcakes. The brand's website also says that  the mini-cupcakes are inspired by Ben-Ishay's idea that people should be able to taste more flavours without a post-dessert guilt trip. First storefronts. Soon after her first slew of catering events, Ben-Ishay was put in touch with a bakery owner in SoHo who had a booth at the holiday market in Union Square and offered her kitchen space if he could buy her cupcakes to sell them at the market. The cupcakes were a big success. On November 27, 2008 Ben-Ishay opened her first pickup window in SoHo at Cafe Bari. March 5, 2009 , four months later, she opened her first retail location. Today. Melissa Ben-Ishay is the President and Chief Product Officer of Baked by Melissa. Her husband, Adi Ben-Ishay, is the Product Development Manager. The company now has 14 locations and ships nationwide. Despite growth, they have stuck to their signature brand of mini cupcakes and still serve the same iconic flavours. Along with her husband, Ben-Ishay still personally develops every flavour. The signature flavour at Baked by Melissa is still the tie-dye cupcake, which was created by Ben-Ishay for a friend's birthday as an homage  to his favourite band, the Grateful Dead. Her personal favourite flavour she has created is Peanut Butter & Jelly. Since starting Baked by Melissa Ben-Ishay has sold more than 100 million cupcakes. Charity initiatives. Side with Love. Ben-Ishay started the Side With Love project in 2017 as a way to spread love and positivity as a company in the wake of negative stories in the news media. The idea was created in a spur of the moment phonecall between Ben-Ishay and Horowitz and was formed within one day. The goal was to give away 100,000 boxes of cupcakes , free of charge. Anyone in the US could order a 25-piece box to surprise someone they wanted as a random act of kindness. The hope was for people to enjoy the cupcakes while also inspiring Americans spread kindness. The result of the campaign was 150,000 cupcakes sent throughout all 50 states to over 1,000 U.S. cities. The company's website received the most traffic ever and had over an 1000% increase in their web transactions in comparison to the average day. The initiative was heavily covered by the media and the hashtag #SideWithLove was a shared on social media  to spread the campaign. Food sites like Eater NY, Spoon University, Elite Daily, and Time Out New York featured Side With Love. Popular food Instagram pages like @foodbabynyc and @nycfoodgals shared the campaign as well. Side With Love was nominated for an award at the Shorty Awards for its impact on social media. Make-A-Wish. In 2018, Ben-Ishay had a partnership with the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The company made a special blue&white cupcake that cost $2, and 75 cents from that profit donated to the children's charity. Additionally, for every Latest & Greatest variety cupcake package  sold, $1.50 was donated. In addition to the money donated, Ben-Ishay welcomed Joshua, a young boy with a congenital heart defect, into her kitchen to be chef for a day. Cakes by Melissa. On October 3, 2017, Ben-Ishay released her first cookbook titled "Cakes by Melissa: Life Is What You Bake It." The cookbook was published by William Morrow Cookbooks. The book contains over 120 recipes for cakes, fillings, and toppings and her baking secrets. The book also includes fill-in-the-blank ingredients sheets, which allows readers to customize recipes to their taste preferences. In "Cakes  by Melissa", Melissa conveys through fun recipes and colourful photos that baking should be fun and easy and that cakes can be bite-sized. Personal life. Melissa Ben-Ishay is married to Adi Ben-Ishay whom she met at a bar near her first retail store in 2008 in SoHo right when she opened it. She hired him to help with business and they fell in love. Two live in Hoboken, New Jersey with their two young daughters, Scottie (3) and Lennie (1).