AUBURN HILLS, Mich. (WXYZ) — Reggie Harris says when people walk into his new bakery, "Shuga-Me Desserts," he wants them to "smell the love."
The owner of the bakery tells 7 Action News it's opening on Halloween and is named after his mother.
"She passed 7 years ago so I just wanted to represent her by naming it after her," said Harris.
Around the same time Harris's mother passed, his wife was also diagnosed with cancer.
Though a heart-breaking year, Harris says it was also the beginning of his family's future.
"During my wife's chemo and radiation, there was a lot of downtime," said Harris. "I just decided to bake one day!"
The hobby turned into a passion.
Soon Harris was waking up at 2 a.m. to bake until 6 a.m. then going to his day job.
"One day one of my good friends said I should sell my cakes," said Harris. "I was like ‘hmmm extra income.’ So I started selling them and the story goes crazy after that."
Harris's son Jeremy will be working with him at Shuga-Me.
When asked about watching his dad start to bake, he said; "The food is really good and then it’s like ‘Oh you can bake too and sculpt? Like God just gave you everything, huh?’"
Harris was recently asked to compete in The Food Network show, "Halloween Wars."
His team was the only one of the teams on the show that was not made up of former Food Network champions.
Even with less experience, his team finished in the top three.
"Those types of displays we're creating take 3 days to make at the minimum," said Harris. "And you have 7 hours to do it."
Harris says multiple forms of cookies, cakes, and more will be offered at Shuga-Me Desserts.
It's Jeremy Harris's job to make sure there's, "something for everybody."
"I feel like I’ve been his biggest fan because I’ve been pushing him to build a storefront for a long time," said Jeremy Harris.
Reggie Harris said; "God has a funny way of sending you down the road that he has planned for you. I was an account executive for 25 years and I walked away from it and started this bakery, but if my wife had never got sick, I would have never started this bakery."
