Juan and Olga Montano were born in separate towns in Cuba, but it was in Florida that they found a sweet spot together, 25 years ago. The couple opened their first Party Cake Bakery shop in Miami in 1993.
The Montanos have come a long way from the struggles of those early days for their business and for their family — when their four young boys would sleep behind the display cases early in the mornings, waiting for the school day to begin, as Juan baked and Olga decorated the cakes. This past April the Montanos opened their 10th store, with a 10-year lease at The Shoppes of Old Cutler, a strip center in Miami–Dade County’s Cutler Bay. Now they are in negotiations for their 11th shop within the county.
“Party Cake Bakery is a special place to many people,” said Olga Montano, “not only because of the fine products we provide with the highest quality, but because we also remain a family-owned and operated business.”
The couple met while working at a Publix supermarket in Miami, where Olga practiced the decorating skills she had learned from her grandmother, and where Juan had become bakery manager. He had been a delivery driver for a French bakery in the city, but his ambition and work ethic were such that he would stay behind long after his shift ended so that he might learn whatever he could from the shop’s pastry chefs.
Olga and Juan Montano founded Party Cake Bakery 25 years ago
Over time, Party Cake Bakery built a reputation in Miami for its café Cubano (espresso), pastel de carne (a meat pie) and croqueta de bacalao (a salted cod dish). Demand kept growing until the Montanos were selling thousands of pastries per week and serving hundreds of customers per day. In 2003 they opened their second shop, and eight years later they began providing catered food. Then they launched several more shops, with each one offering an open view of the kitchen so that customers could observe the bakers and decorators at work. “Customers love this feature in our stores,” said Olga Montano, “as they trust everything going on behind the scenes.”
Having recently purchased a warehouse in West Kendall that once belonged to Sears, the Montanos have plans to turn it into a commissary in which they will make products for distribution to their shops or for serving customers on-site.
“This building process should take us to the end of 2019,” said the Montanos’ son Alejandro, who handles most of the marketing for the business. “When our commissary is functioning, we plan on growing north, beginning with Broward County and going upward from there.” The family also intends to remodel some of the existing Dade County units to provide more seating, he says.
As for plans beyond the Sunshine State, Alejandro Montano asserts only that the family’s focus will remain on Florida for now. “But just like we treat our customers,” he said, “we will never say no.”
By Spencer Rumsey
Contributor, Shopping Centers Today
