An Instagram Baker Offered Free Birthday Cakes for Keiki Living on SNAP—and Hopes Other Businesses Will Follow
Georgi DeCosta’s offer means 12 kids around O‘ahu will celebrate with festive birthday bundt cakes.
Editor’s note: Since publishing this story, we’ve learned that Mercado de la Raza and Bo Tea are also helping struggling families. Click the links or check their Instagrams for details. And Georgi DeCosta let us know that thanks to generous donors, she’s offering more keiki birthday cakes in November (except Thanksgiving week) and is extending her offer through December.
Photo: Georgi DeCosta
The post appeared on Georgi’s Goodies’ Instagram last week, its white letters popping against a bright pink background: “I want to bake birthday cakes for kids in furloughed/SNAP households,” it read. “Let me know if you know anybody in this situation for November.”
The writer was Georgi DeCosta, a cottage baker in Kāne‘ohe. “It’s a scary time for many families as they see their income plummet or disappear overnight,” she wrote. “What can I do? I can bake. I would like to bake birthday cakes for kids in households affected by the government shutdown. I can do 1 per week for the month of November.”
Why? We reached out and asked DeCosta about her story. “There was a period when I was raising my kids on SNAP,” the federal government’s food stamp program, she says. “I’m lucky I’m no longer there, so I wanted to pay back and give back to the community. Especially for the kids, because it’s not their fault.”
Photo: Georgi DeCosta
DeCosta bakes pound cakes and bundt cakes. Most popular are her lemon crunch and strawberry pound cakes. There are also s’mores cakes, peanut butter chocolate cakes, classic chocolate cakes and Oreo cakes—the one most requested by the November keiki. Birthday cakes, colorful and decorated wit sprinkles are the most festive.
Within a day, 10 SNAP families flooded her Instagram and she hit her target: She’s donating 12 kalakoa cakes for keiki with birthdays in November.
Photo: Courtesy of @georgis_goodies
She went a step further and “adopted” two moms with November birthdays, offering them a choice of any cake at her booth at Windward Mall’s Plenty of Aloha farmers market on Sundays. Mindful that families would have to drive to Kāne‘ohe to pick up their keiki cakes, DeCosta got her friends to donate $35 gas cards to each family.
Georgi DeCosta. Photo: Courtesy of @georgis_goodies
She estimates each cake costs $25 to $35 to make. “It’s worth it. I may even do this as an annual thing. We’ll see,” she says. “I get it, it’s hard to pay for a birthday cake on top of Thanksgiving and everything else. I’ve struggled, so I’m grateful for whatever I have now, even though it’s not a lot.”
But while cottage bakers in other parts of the country picked up on her example and started their own projects, DeCosta says, her real hope is that businesses in Hawai‘i will step forward to help families struggling with the federal government shutdown.
SEE ALSO: Thanksgiving Menus at Restaurants Around O‘ahu
“I would just encourage businesses to figure out in what ways they could possibly offer support that doesn’t necessarily break the bank. There’s unconventional ways to support our local families that are in need right now,” she says. “I don’t know if some of the other businesses are struggling too. But I would love to see people get inspired by this story and do their own projects. That would be awesome.”
Mari Taketa is editor of Frolic Hawai‘i and dining editor of HONOLULU Magazine.
