ROANOKE, Va. – Shaneice Jones has always been creative. She used that to her advantage when it came to her godson’s baby shower a few years ago. She recalls, “After the baby shower, a lady came up to me and was like, ‘Hey, how much do you charge for these cake pops?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know.’”
This first got the engines turning for Jones, who then tried to make a cake for her son.
“The first time was an epic fail.”
That wasn’t enough to discourage her from making something great. She began plugging away at YouTube, and jokingly tells us, “I don’t have a degree in culinary whatsoever. I actually say I graduated from YouTube University.”
From that spawned a new level of creativity, which meant opening a brick-and-mortar.
“I was getting so many orders, and my house was starting to look like a bakery, and I’m like ‘I need to separate these two,’ so let me go ahead and open up a storefront.”
November 4 of 2021, Sweets by Shaneice opened its doors in downtown Roanoke. One look at her Instagram page will show you the creativity, the color and the flavor behind each one of her creations. It’s not just the cupcakes. Jones keeps tabs on the latest culinary trends and makes them her own.
Cheesecake cones have become a huge hit in her early days.
“Strawberry crunch. A cookie crumb on top with a strawberry and some filling on the inside of a vanilla cupcake.”
At the same time, she sticks to what made her stand out in the first place with cupcake flavors like, “Red velvet, carrot, Twix and chocolate hazelnut.”