Advocacy takes many forms. For Kyle Cuffie-Scott, it means opening a bakery in honor of his cousin Darnel, dedicated to raising awareness about HIV/AIDS. For the last five years, he has run Darnel’s Cakes, an LGBTQ+- and Black-owned bakery in Northern Liberties, with co-owner Joe Lope.
Cuffie-Scott, who is originally from Springfield, Massachusetts, got his start cooking with his family growing up, especially during the holidays. It was also during these family get-togethers that he got to spend time with his younger cousin, who was from Georgia.
“We spent those [holidays] together as a family,” he said. “I was always in the kitchen, and Darnel was just running around acting crazy. He’s about 10 years younger than me, maybe a little bit more, but he was a little, little child and I was almost a pre-teen.”
Cuffie-Scott explained that he would help his mom and grandmother make all of the holiday food, sometimes experimenting with baking to varying degrees of success.
“But it was mostly just Darnel and I interacting while I’m cooking or opening gifts, and we really just spent all the holidays and the fun times together,” he continued.
The impact of these family holidays is shown in his bakery’s menu, which features many recipes inspired by what his family made.
For college, Cuffie-Scott attended Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island, earning a degree in baking and pastry arts. After that, he got a bachelor’s degree in communications from Temple University. He has made Philadelphia his home for the last 20 years and until 2016, had worked in marketing and communications.
In 2015, he started what would become Darnel’s Cakes with a bake sale on World AIDS Day. The bake sale honored Darnel, who died two years earlier due to AIDS-related complications. Cuffie-Scott donated all the profits he earned from the sale to COLOURS Organization, a local Philadelphia nonprofit that works to empower LGBTQ+ people of color, especially those from the African diaspora.
In 2016, Cuffie-Scott formalized Darnel’s Cakes into a business, getting the LLC approved and started selling at the Lansdale Farmers Market.
He started with just cupcakes, cookies and brownies; but his menu has grown over the last 10 years he’s been selling at the market.
He used the market to experiment with different flavor combinations, and feedback he got from his customers influenced what he put on the menu. And in the setting of a farmers market, this feedback was sometimes immediate, but he also watched for what people came back for week after week.
Later that year, he got a wholesaling contract with the University of Pennsylvania, making more than 1,000 cookies each week for their dining halls.
During the first four years, Cuffie-Scott did all of his baking out of a kitchen space he rented from The Enterprise Center. Then in late 2019, he signed a lease to his first brick-and-mortar store at 444 North Third Street for a May 2020 opening. In February, he dropped the last bit of paperwork off to the Department of Public Health and was told they would get back to him in about six weeks. But before that could happen, quarantine shut everything down in early March.
“I pretty much had to put everything on hold like everybody else, and just kind of sit and wait. So I was at home [while] cooking food [and] testing recipes — kind of rethinking my idea of what the business is going to be,” he said.
Cuffie-Scott started testing different breads to make in-house and reworking the menu. The store opened at the end of May 2020. However, their first day open was the day of the first Black Lives Matter protest for George Floyd in Philadelphia.
“So we had our shop open. Then that day, they shut the city down. That was when the city was shut off from river to river, from the Schuylkill to the Delaware River. And I think as far north as Arch Street or Spring Garden, and as far south as South Street, so there was no car traffic going into Center City,” said Cuffie-Scott.
“But clearly, that day we were open, and our first day open, and people were either coming to our shop first and then going to the protest, or leaving the protest and coming to our shop. So it was a really, really emotional day to say the least,” he added.
Now almost five years later, the business is still going strong and getting ready to expand to a new location in March.
Over the years, their advocacy work has also expanded. When the business first started, they used social media to remind people to get tested on different significant days like World AIDS Day.
Then they started offering free HIV tests.
“We linked with Bebashi and they supplied us with free take-home tests. You can, of course, get them from Bebashi, but going into a clinic like that can be very daunting and scary,” Cuffie-Scott explained.
He continued, “We took those tests and basically, we just helped give them out and we put them in brown paper bags so they’re very confidential. So if you’re coming in to get a breakfast sandwich and you do want a test, we kind of conceal it so it’s private.
He added that they are required to take down some information like the person’s name and contacts.
The organization they partnered with, Bebashi, is Philadelphia’s second oldest AIDS organization and the first African-American organization in the country to address the AIDS crisis.
They also advocate through Thrifty Disco, dance parties by Philly AIDS Thrift that fund various AIDS organizations. Cuffie-Scott decided to sell cookies and baked goods at the party and has been doing so now for years. He then got an opportunity to sit on the Philly AIDS Thrift board.
“Now that I’m working with them, I’m literally working with everybody that has been working within the AIDS epidemic, kind of since it started,” he said. “I feel completely honored.”
For Cuffie-Scott, having a positive impact on his community and helping end the AIDS epidemic are key to his business.
“We’re just people here trying to make some good food and trying to help out our underserved communities,” he said. “So I just want to be a resource, and almost like a source of light, for lack of better words. But I just want to be there to help in whatever way I can.”
He added that he really wants Darnel’s Cakes to be a place where people can go to feel supported like a caring shoulder to rely on.
For more information on Darnel’s Cakes, visit darnelscakes.com or follow them on Instagram @darnelscakes.
This story is part of the Digital Equity Local Voices Fellowship lab through News is Out. The lab initiative is made possible with support from Comcast NBCUniversal.