About the Pound Cake Company
In 1991 Jan Matthews-Hodges won her first ribbon at the North Carolina State Fair in the true pound cake category. Over the years she continued to enter her cakes, usually bringing home a ribbon and always trying new methods to create the perfect pound cake. In 2003, Jan knew that she had the right combination of butter, sugar, flour, and eggs - the only ingredients in a true pound cake. The judges agreed. She brought home the Blue Ribbon and Best of Show. Not only was her cake the best pound cake in the true pound cake category, it was the best cake overall at the fair.
Family and friends encouraged Jan to share her talent with others by opening her own bakery - and the Pound Cake Company was born. True to her roots, Jan started the Pound Cake Company in a small downtown location in her hometown of Benson, North Carolina. Benson is a small eastern North Carolina town (pop. 3,500) about twenty-five miles south of Raleigh and is best know for its annual Mule Days celebration. By starting the Pound Cake Company in Benson Jan followed a family tradition - her grandmother was a shop owner in Benson and her father was an agribusiness man.
Jan ran the Pound Cake Company from it’s small downtown Benson location for three years as a part-time enterprise - working as a legal assistant by day and returning each evening to Benson to pursue her real passion. In January 2007, Jan decided to join with a business partner - Bobby Jenkins, the lawyer she worked for ten years - and devote herself full-time to growing the Pound Cake Company.
In March 2007, the Pound Cake Company moved to a much larger building - the old Benson Elementary School cafeteria. With help from the town of Benson and a rural economic redevelopment grant from the North Carolina Rural Center, the abandoned cafeteria was transformed into a production facility that allowed the Pound Cake Company to expand its business and make its award winning creations available to even more people. The move was especially important to Jan, since she ate lunch in that very cafeteria as a little girl.
Before The Pound Cake Company moved into the cafeteria, the building had been abandoned for several years and was falling into disrepair. The Pound Cake Company transformed the empty cafeteria into a thriving enterprise where local residents are employed to help produce some of the finest cookies, bread and desserts on the market.
At the Pound Cake Company, we believe in giving back to our rural community by providing opportunity to some who might otherwise be left behind. Many of our employees walk to work from a federally-subsidized housing project located less than one mile from our facility. For some of our employees, we are their first job, for others we are the only opportunity they have. Whether it’s giving an employee her first real job-related responsibility or watching as another employee opens a checking account for the first time, we believe that people deserve the chance to prove themselves and in the process better their lives.
We employee many who have learning or others disabilities. It is both our belief and our experience that such disabilities in no way keep someone from being a loyal and valuable employee. It may take a little extra time and effort on occasion, but that’s hardly a sacrifice when it means giving someone a chance they otherwise would not have.
Can a pound cake change the world? Maybe not the whole world. But we believe that baking pound cakes in our converted elementary school cafeteria in Benson, NC make our rural community a better place. As the Pound Cake Company continues to grow Jan remains true to her initial goal - to makes products of the highest quality while at the same time creating jobs and opportunity in her hometown.