The bakery is experiencing newfound success, welcoming long lines of new customers as they’re faced with cream cheese and container shortages.
Andrea Lee, left, and Margarita Semeniuc make cheesecake at Laika, a Ukrainian-owned cheesecake and espresso business, on Feb. 26. Through sales and donations, the shop has raised more than $100,000 for Ukrainian humanitarian groups and military following the Russian invasion.The overwhelming success of a relief effort by a Ukrainian-owned bakery for its war-torn home country has left its staff feeling grateful.
The bakery sold 4,600 single-serve jars of cheesecake, each at $6.50, and 670 cheesecake slices, ranging between $7.50 to $8.50. In addition to cheesecake, customers bought T-shirts, hats and coffee to help raise more than $72,000 in just one weekend, that owner Anna Afanasieva said would go to humanitarian groups and the Ukrainian military.
“We posted it on our social media and it went viral instantly. We never expected it, and the next day we came here and the line was around the building already before we opened,” said co-owner Viktor Krizma.