Young, Gifted and Black
By Taki S. Raton
Taylor Moxey
While most grade school girls may be busy playing with dolls and other kids’ stuff, Nigel Boys in Financial Juneteeth on June 5, 2014 says that our feature this week is “well on her way to what she dreams of doing in later life – opening her own bakery.
She is young, gifted & Black. Taylor Moxey at the age of 8 is already a celebrated chef. After school and right before her dance class, she can be found in her parent’s kitchen baking such delectable as cakes, cookies, cupcakes and other pastries for sale to an eagerly awaiting customer.
“If I have a client on Tuesday, my dad picks me up like at 1 from school and we go to the house and we get the ingredients ready and start baking and by the time it’s done and we deliver it, I go to dance,” Taylor shares with ABC News about how she juggles her schedule.
Writes Amy Eley in Today Food, her road to visions of owning her own bakery began with a Sunday trip to Target when Taylor saw this doll that she wanted to buy and she asked her parents for a $40 loan.
“I told her, ‘You know what? Find a way to get the money,’“ Vernon Moxey, Taylor’s dad says in TODAY. com as quoted in Eley.
“Can I sell cookies” she asked?
Moxey works as an etiquette consultant but reveals that he was at one point homeless. It was his decision and guidance as a father to use his life experience to teach Taylor about being self-sufficient.
As further described in Eley, dad and daughter wrote out a business agreement on a napkin and Moxey gave her a $40 loan.
Taylor used the money not to by the doll but to whip up some cookies and brownies which she then took to church that Sunday to sell after the service.
“Honestly, I didn’t think she would make the $40 back,” Moxey says in Today Food. But she ended up making more than enough to pay her dad back and cover the toy. She walked away that church Sunday with $175.
“We were blown away,” says Moxey in Stefanie Tuder’s June 4, 2014 feature posting.
Soon thereafter, people from the congregation began calling to find out if she is coming the following Sunday and to place more orders.
Rather than buying that doll she wanted at Target, Taylor chose to use the profits to order business cards and start a real pastry business.
“She started passing the cards out as ‘Taylor the Chef’” Moxey explained in Tuder.
“My phone number was on them, so people started calling, and all of a sudden, I’m getting cupcake orders. And it just spiraled,” he says.
The aspiring young chef even won in 2014 the annual KISS Country DJ Chili Showdown & Chef’s Cornbread Contest beating out other trained, seasoned, and professional chefs in the local Miami area.
She won a $200 cash award and a 6 x 4 foot advertising display billboard for her bragging rights to advertise her business.
Tuder further writes that a local prominent Miami chef was not even aware that he had lost to an 8-year-old until Taylor visited him in his restaurant a few days later for a picture.
Taylor opened an Instagram and Twitter account to field request from local businesses like Citibank and HGTV’s Bobby Beck.
“She decorates her own boxes by hand and people love that because it’s nostalgic,” Moxey said in ABC News. “She personalizes for everyone. The cupcakes are made with love,” he adds.
Taylor charges $20 for six cupcakes which according to Tuder is the standard rate in Miami.
“It’s really fun for me,” she admits. “I’m saving up for some different cupcake boxes and molders and stuff like that which I need for baking.”
While Taylor has made nearly $10,000 so far as reported in Eley, she donates 30 percent of her proceeds to dyslexia awareness initiatives, a learning disorder that her dad has.
“If you have a platform and people can hear your voice, it’s important to use it for some good,” Moxey said in Today Food.
While the orders continue to pour in for “Taylor the Chef,” her parents are making a strong effort to keep the business under control so Taylor can still focus on being a kid.
“I don’t want to take away her childhood,” Moxey said.
“Every decision is cleared by us, but we allow her to make the decisions,” he positions.
And what about her future?
“The rest of my cooking career is just to go off and fly free and to run my own bakery,” she excitedly says in Annabel Fenwick Elliott’s Daily Mail posting.
“She’s got moxie. That’s for sure,” her dad says in Tuder. “Sometimes mom and I have to sit back in amazement.
She’s really headstrong and goal oriented.” For those interested in placing orders or to just follow her progress, you can find her on Instagram@ Taylorthechef.