Best Cake Shops in My Business Directory

For a lot of us in Greenville, this is where you order the cake when a birthday is coming up. The sweet potato cake, layered with homemade cream cheese icing, is the one that built the reputation, and regulars will argue it holds up against anything in the Upstate. Coconut, carrot, and German chocolate have their own loyalists, and the case usually carries a rotating handful of seasonal layer cakes next to the year-round staples. Popular ones go fast, so the standing advice is to call a few days ahead for a whole one. The kitchen leans Southern and made-from-scratch. The walnut chicken salad is a fixture, often built into a trio with a love muffin and fresh fruit, and the sandwich board runs from a turkey Rachel to a crab cake to a warm baked brie plate. Soups, quiches, and salads round out an easy midday stop, whether you're eating solo or feeding a table of friends. The room is part of the draw too: colorful walls, mismatched furniture, and a lived-in coziness owner Sara built on purpose. Longtime customers describe the visit as more of an experience than a quick bite. Honest read from the reviews: the desserts are the legend, and the savory menu is where opinions split. Most people leave happy, but the lunch plates can have an off day, and a few regulars wish the kitchen brought the same magic to the food that it brings to the cakes. Come for the cake with full confidence, order it ahead, and let lunch be the pleasant reason you're there to pick it up.

Suga Pie Honeybun started as a dessert menu, which is where the name comes from, and grew into a full service catering and personal chef company led by Greenville native Ebony Sullivan. She learned to cook in her grandmother's kitchen and built the business around one promise: letting you be a guest at your own event. In practice that means she and her team handle everything, from the menu to florals, linens, lighting, tableware, and service staff, with a bartender on request. Each event starts with a consultation on concept, budget, and menu, then gets built to order, whether it is a wedding, a gala, a church function, a holiday party, or the corporate work she has been growing into. The food carries an unmistakable Southern spin. Customer favorites run to fried lobster, brisket, and smoked mac and cheese, alongside the desserts that started it all, including a signature strawberry lemonade layer cake. She is comfortable at scale, having once turned out 1,500 desserts for a single corporate event. True to the company motto, "here to serve," she partners with Greenville's Ronald McDonald House, donating food to families whose children are in treatment. Regulars tend to describe her the same way: organized, professional, and easy to work with. Because every menu is curated to the occasion, the samples posted online are only a starting point, and what she would build for your event is a conversation, not a set list.

The name says it plainly: at Cakes n' Conversations, the cake starts with a conversation. Owner Rhonda builds custom, made-to-order cakes one order at a time, the kind you can't pull off a grocery shelf, designed around whatever you describe when you reach out. This is a by-request shop off the Woodruff Road corridor rather than a walk-up display case, and themed occasion cakes are the specialty. Past builds have run the range from a "13 Going on 30" movie theme to a bold cheetah print, so birthdays, weddings, and one-off ideas all land in the same wheelhouse. You can order online through the shop's Square site or arrange delivery, which makes it easy to sort out the details from home or the office. It's also one of the Upstate's Black-owned bakeries. What customers keep coming back to is Rhonda herself. The reviews hit the same notes again and again: she listens closely, communicates the whole way through, takes last-minute asks in stride, and hands over a cake that matches the picture in your head, often beating it. The happy surprise most of them mention is that it tastes as good as it looks. Where it goes from there is the conversation part. The flavors, the fillings, and the design that fits your occasion all get worked out once you start it.

For a lot of us around Greenville, the sweet tooth got its start behind these glass cases. Richard Strossner, a German immigrant who trained as a Konditor and baked at the old Poinsett Hotel, opened the family bakery in 1947, and three generations later his grandson Tapley runs it. It's the oldest family-owned bakery in town, and the cases up front, rows of cakes, pies, cookies, petit fours and pastries, are still what hits you first when the door swings open. Over the decades it grew well past the pastry counter. A cafe side turns out breakfast, quiches, and sandwiches on bread baked in-house, eaten in or out on the patio. The deli counter handles the weeknight rescue: lasagna, casseroles, pot pies, chicken salad and pimento cheese to carry home. Regulars come back for the chicken salad and the German chocolate cake, and the counter still puts out free samples while you make up your mind. Custom cakes are their own operation, with in-house designers on weddings and holidays and a featured cake that rotates through the year. You'll leave with the blue-and-white striped bag Greenville has known for generations. Southern Living ranked it fourth among all bakeries in the South in 2022, the year it turned seventy-five, and the locals who keep the line moving tell the same story. Which recipes have run unchanged since 1947 is the part only the family can really tell you.

Susan McMakin opened her doors in 2005, and twenty years on, the shop still works the way the name suggests: custom cakes built one at a time, treated as commissioned pieces rather than something waiting in a case. Wedding cakes are the signature, though the range runs well past them. Groom's cakes, birthday and graduation cakes, religious and corporate cakes, and full showpiece builds all come out of the same kitchen. What sets it apart from most custom bakeries is the everyday side: cupcakes and ready-made cakes are stocked for walk-ins, so a midweek craving doesn't need an appointment. Only the big builds do. Those larger orders run through appointments and tastings, and the pace is deliberate. The team caps how many cakes it makes each day so every one gets real time and real hands on it instead of an assembly line. Decorating parties and private events run by reservation. Regulars tend to mention two things that don't always come together: cakes that look like art and still taste the way you hoped they would. The other steady note is loyalty, families who bought a sweet-sixteen cake here, came back for the wedding, then for their kids' birthdays, with a team that has recreated an anniversary cake twenty years after the first. Which flavors and fillings belong with which design is the part worth coming in to work out.

Kristin Kay spent years piping frosting inside a corporate cupcake franchise before deciding to bake on her own terms. Going independent in 2019 gave her room to source her own ingredients, adjust the menu on customer feedback, and build the flavor list as a team effort, where nearly everyone on staff has a house cupcake they call their own. The lineup leans adventurous. Traditional standbys like Signature Vanilla and Strawberry Crush share the case with quirkier creations such as Banana Pudding Pie and seasonal picks like Pumpkin Maple Praline. Cupcakes are the headline, but the menu reaches further into cookie sandwiches, parfaits, cutting cakes, and custom orders for weddings and celebrations. What sets it apart is who it feeds. Vegan and gluten-free options are baked daily, with keto and sugar-free handled on request, and the gluten-free cupcakes get their own display case rather than a leftover shelf. Kay also points her ovens at the community, baking for Upstate fundraisers well beyond the shop. Regulars give it real credit for cupcakes that stay moist, for a small, art-filled space that feels more boutique than bakery, and for wedding work priced without the usual markup. The menu keeps shifting, so finding the one that becomes your regular is something you sort out a few visits in.

The name tells you where to find it: a small side-street shop just off Augusta Road, in one of the older neighborhoods south of downtown. It's a from-scratch operation that greets you with the smell before you're fully through the door, and regulars have leaned on it long enough that it reads as an Augusta Road staple more than a storefront. The case runs from cookies and tarts to sweet loaves, cupcakes, and cake pops, with a savory side a lot of folks don't expect: quiche and biscuits sit right alongside the sweets. The rosemary shortbread is the thing regulars name first, and the chocolate cookies aren't far behind. Custom work is a real part of it, from birthday cakes to wedding and groom's cakes built around whatever theme you bring in. Customers who love almond say the selection here beats most, gluten-free options are on hand, and it's common to find samples out on the counter, even for the kids who wander in. What people keep coming back to is that it's old-fashioned in the honest sense: the goods get made without the premixes and shortcuts many shops lean on. Whether you turn out to be a rosemary-shortbread person or an almond-cake person is something you settle one visit at a time.