There was no special occasion calling for cake.
But Amparo Leticia Navarro still placed her order at Lucy’s Cake Shop on a recent summer day. It would be a nice surprise for her husband at home, she said.
Lifting the lid on the plain, white cake box to see ribbons of purple, blue, yellow and green icing drizzling the edges of the two-layer cake and “I love you” in chunky, yellow letters, her eyes lit up.
Navarro often stops by the shop to pick up dessert for church gatherings and other events, a tradition handed down by her mother that she now shares with her adult daughter.
“When you come in, you receive joy,” she said.
Celebrating sentiments and special occasions is something Lucy’s and owner Beverly Donathen knows all about — and not just because the far Westside bakery helps San Antonians do that every day.
This year, Lucy’s marks a milestone of its own to celebrate — 50 years in business.
It’s hard to say how many cakes for everything from birthdays, showers and retirements to weddings, anniversaries and divorces that Lucy’s has made in its five decades.
Even Navarro can’t count the number she’s ordered over the years. “Oh mamita!” she exclaimed at the thought.
Lucy’s Cake Shop hung its shingle in 1974 after Donathen’s mother, Lucy Majors, had begun baking and decorating cakes for friends out of her home in the late 1960s.
Majors, now age 93 and retired, learned to decorate cakes while living in Guam with her U.S. Air Force husband. Stateside, she took more classes before they eventually moved to San Antonio.
Working a full-time job at the Lackland Air Force Base Exchange, Majors baked and decorated her cakes in the evenings. Watching how hard her mother worked, a 10-year-old Donathen stepped in to help, baking cakes and mixing icing after school.
“I just felt like she was just exhausted,” Donathen said. “That way when she came home, all she had to do is put it together and she didn’t have to start from the beginning.”
Business grew and Majors needed more space so she built the small cake shop at 2030 SW Loop 410, near Marbach Road.
Her husband Billy Majors doubted a business selling specialty cakes would be successful but he was supportive, helping out after work and then full time when he retired in 1977.
At first, business was slow enough that Majors also taught cake decorating classes. The shop still sells cake decorating supplies but no longer offers classes.
She also entered local baking contests. Several photo albums in the shop hold 1970s-era snapshots and old newspaper clippings with photos of the prize-winning cakes she made.
Donathen kept on working at the shop through high school, putting in long hours on Friday nights after football games and returning on Saturdays.
Success did come to Lucy’s and the reason is clear to Donathen. “Because she had a good cake,” she said.
In the years since, the Lucy’s building has been expanded four times and another location was added in 1977 at 919 SW Military Dr. on the South Side where customers can pick up their cake orders.
Donathen started working at the shop full time when she turned 18 and then took over in 1996 when her mother retired. Donathen’s husband Bob also now works at Lucy’s, doing the bookkeeping and deliveries.
The bakery is staffed with many longtimers, some who have worked there for 30 to 40 years. Lucas Ramirez got a job at Lucy’s at the urging of a teacher during his freshman year of high school.
Now at age 55, he’s the in-house expert at airbrushing cakes, adding a spray of color to the character cakes and others.
Most of the decorators started at Lucy’s with little experience, Donathen said. “But they’re also very creatively talented so I don’t really have to train everything … they just kind of flourish and blossom and take off,” she said.
In the kitchen, a kind of assembly line is formed with each of the decorators assigned by Donathen to the task they do best. Stephanie Dominguez, who has been at Lucy’s for 24 years is good at 3D modeling using fondant; 35-year staffer Mariana Anderson does birthday and wedding cakes; 40-year worker Ramirez is talented at flower-making, and Alycia Gray likes piping the borders on cake edges.
Tubs of icing in every color and decorator bags and tips are organized across the kitchen and, on wire shelves, finished cakes are stacked high, from a pink swirly two-layer and a blue Cookie Monster to a sheet cake with red roses and a chocolate cake with chocolate icing.
In another part of the kitchen, a commercial-grade oven the size of a walk-in closet can bake on its rotating shelves 100 times more cakes of all sizes than the typical-size oven they started with, Donathen said.
A side room holds dozens of wedding cakes in different styles and covered in hardened royal icing on display so couples can select the kind of cake they want for their big day. A sign on the wall says, First Comes Love, Then Comes Cake.
Once when another cake decorator called Donathen in a panic because a wedding cake she had made was badly damaged just before the event, Donathen helped her pull it back together just in time.
Increasing competition in the cake-baking industry has tested Lucy’s. In years past, the biggest players were only Lucy’s, Nadler’s, Serma’s and H-E-B, Donathen said. “But now when all the cake shows started to come on … there’s almost like a bakery on every corner.”
During the recent pandemic, when gatherings were small, customers ordered mostly 8-inch round cakes at $30 each, not enough to sustain the shop. A federal Paycheck Protection Program loan sustained the shop and prevented any layoffs.
In addition to special orders, Lucy’s sells ready-made cakes and cupcakes to walk-in patrons, providing custom decorating on the spot.
Fridays and Saturdays are the busiest days of the week for Lucy’s, with the shop selling between 200 and 400 cakes every weekend, more if there’s a holiday like Mother’s Day on the calendar.
After 50 years, Lucy’s has developed generational loyalty, Donathen said.
“We’ve made [cakes] for when the mother and father got married, and their baby showers and their kid’s birthday,” she said. “And now we make their quinceaneras and their wedding [cakes].”
Donathen still recalls best her first bake, in 1973 at age 11, a sheetcake for her mother’s birthday.
“I was surprising her so I had the cake and made it when she wasn’t looking with all her leftover stuff,” she said. “After I made it, I put it under my bed so she didn’t see it.”
Passionate about her work, Donathen has no plans to leave the 50-year-old business any time soon, figuring if she lives as long as her parents did, “I still got 30 years in me,” she said.
Enough time to mark another big milestone — worthy of cake.
