WESTFIELD, Ind. — Sales of ice cream cakes at the Westfield Dairy Queen tripled during the month of May, and that has the store’s cake manager Diana Schwartz both proud and scurrying to find other cake artists to help satisfy the exploding demand.
"We have around 300 cakes that we sell a month and for the month of May, it reached almost 900," Schwartz said. "It was just incredible how many people started coming in. I'm usually the only cake decorator. And for the last three months or so, I have had to have three other girls helping just to try to keep up."
Schwartz has been taking pride in her cake designs for the past five years, but it wasn't until a Facebook group of Westfield moms started sharing her culinary artwork that sales started to soar earlier this year.
"One of my coworkers, Angie, texted me and said, 'Have you been on the Westfield moms page?'" Schwartz said. "She said, 'You've got to get on there. You’ve got to see what they're saying about your cakes!'"
"I got on there, and it made me cry — it really did," Schwartz said. "They were saying I needed to be the 'prom queen' of Westfield or something along those lines and saying how amazing the cakes were and how awesome it was that I was bringing so much joy."
Then, when the coronavirus pandemic hit, Schwartz's unique cake designs became the must-have for families celebrating events while sheltering in place.
"I don't know how much of all this is contributed to COVID, but you know a lot of people were stuck indoors, and they were upset because they couldn't have birthday parties anymore," Schwartz said. "When COVID hit, people were just trying to find something to help them relax and help them keep things happy for birthdays. Because of that, we saw an uptick, a tremendous uptick in sales."
It helps that Schwartz is talented enough to fill any cake request.
"People have been crazy about 'Tiger King,' and I had no idea that was even a show," Schwartz said. "Yes, I made a Joe Exotic cake. I even had somebody order a Carole Baskin cake. Now, I've got somebody who wants Harry Potter riding flying on a shark!"
Schwartz has a degree in advertising from Butler University, but she chose to work at Dairy Queen in order to spend more time with her husband and two kids.
Now, she has become a cake designing celebrity of sorts in Westfield, and she's thrilled that her cakes are bringing so much joy to families during these tough times.
"There were days where I was like, 'Oh, I don't know why I'm still working at a Dairy Queen after all these years,'" Schwartz said. "This is where God has me right now. About a month before COVID, I just decided, 'OK, I'm gonna stay here. This is where you want me, this is where I'm going to be.' I didn't know why I was still making cakes, after all this time, why I hadn't moved on. Well, now I know.”