Today we’d like to introduce you to Gena Rainey.
Hi Gena, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
A couple of years ago, life changed very quickly for my family. Both my mom and my dad were diagnosed with cancer. They were divorced and living in different states, and at the time I was juggling a full-time corporate career, raising my children, being a wife, helping my mom with transportation and her care, and spending any free weekend I could traveling to Florida to be with my dad.
Eventually, my mom went into remission, but we lost my dad to cancer. Not long afterward, while we were finally beginning to feel like we could catch our breath, we learned that my stepdad also had cancer. We lost him just three months after his diagnosis.
During all of this, I became very good at taking care of everyone and everything around me. What I wasn’t very good at was taking care of myself.
One day, my oldest son asked me a simple question: “What are you doing for yourself?”
I didn’t have an answer.
I was surviving. I was working, taking care of my family, showing up wherever I was needed and getting through each day. But somewhere along the way, I had stopped making room for anything that was simply mine.
My son knew how much I loved decorating cookies. It had always been something that allowed me to be creative, slow down and disappear into something happy for a little while. He encouraged me to turn that little escape into something more.
And then he did more than encourage me—he helped me build it. He even set up my first online store.
That was the beginning of Rainey’s Sweet Treats.
What started as a way for me to find a little joy during an incredibly difficult season of life slowly became something I never expected. Every cookie gave me a chance to create something happy for someone else—a birthday, a wedding, a holiday, a celebration, or sometimes simply a little treat that made someone’s day better.
And somewhere in the process of creating those moments for other people, I started finding myself again.
Rainey’s Sweet Treats wasn’t born from a carefully written business plan or a lifelong dream of becoming an entrepreneur. It was born because my son saw something I couldn’t see at the time: I needed something that belonged to me, something that brought me joy.
What began as my escape has grown into a business I’m incredibly proud of, and I’m still discovering where it can go. I think that’s one of my favorite parts of this story. I didn’t start with a grand plan. I started with some cookies, encouragement from my son, and the decision to make a little room in my life for something I loved.
And that little decision ended up changing much more than I ever expected.
Then, this year, my life shifted again.
After years in the corporate world, I unexpectedly lost my full-time job. It was scary, especially because that career had represented stability for my family for so long. But it also forced me to ask myself a question very similar to the one my son had asked me years earlier: What do I really want to do next?
This time, I had an answer.
I wanted to give Rainey’s Sweet Treats a real chance.
So instead of immediately treating the business as the little side project I squeezed into the corners of my life, I started asking what it could become if I actually gave it my time and attention.
And I am very much still in that chapter.
I’m learning how to move from simply making cookies to building a business. I’m reaching out to local businesses, developing wholesale relationships, learning new equipment and techniques, expanding what I can offer, and hearing “no” sometimes. I’m also experiencing those wonderful little moments when someone says “yes.”
Some days I feel incredibly confident about where I’m going, and other days I’m figuring it out as I go. But I’m learning that building something of your own doesn’t require having every answer before you begin. Sometimes it just requires being willing to knock on another door after one closes.
Recently, some of those doors have started opening. Local businesses have begun giving my cookies a chance, placing orders and allowing me to see that something I once did simply because it brought me peace might actually have the potential to become something much bigger.
There is something wonderfully full-circle about that for me.
My son originally encouraged me to start Rainey’s Sweet Treats because he thought his mom needed something that made her happy. Neither of us could have known that years later, during another unexpected turning point in my life, that same little business would be sitting there waiting for me.
I don’t know exactly how big Rainey’s Sweet Treats will become, and I’m learning to be okay with that. Right now, I’m focused on growing thoughtfully, creating products I’m proud to put my name on, building relationships within my community and saying yes to opportunities that scare me just enough to know I’m growing.
For a long time, cookies were my escape from everything else in my life.
Now I’m beginning to wonder if they might actually be part of what comes next.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road, and honestly, I think I’m still driving on some of the bumps!
In the beginning, my biggest challenge was simply finding the time to give the business the attention it needed. I was working a full-time corporate job, raising a family and dealing with everything happening in our personal lives. I loved making cookies, but building an actual business requires much more than making a great product. You have to find customers, market yourself, learn pricing, manage orders and somehow convince people who have never heard of you to take a chance on what you’re creating.
Finding and growing that customer base has probably been my biggest challenge from the beginning, and it’s still something I’m actively working on today.
Since losing my corporate job and deciding to give Rainey’s Sweet Treats a real opportunity to grow, I’ve had more time to focus on the business—but that has introduced an entirely new set of challenges.
I’m constantly learning.
I’ve been teaching myself new decorating techniques and learning equipment like my Silhouette Cameo so I can create my own stencils, designs and other elements for custom orders. I’m also learning how to create my own cookie cutters, which gives me even more flexibility in what I can offer customers.
Some of that learning has been exciting. Some of it has involved a machine refusing to cooperate while I seriously reconsidered my life choices!
But every new skill gives me another tool to grow the business and another opportunity to say “yes” when a customer asks, “Can you make this?”
I’m also learning the business side in real time—how to approach local businesses, develop wholesale relationships, market my products, price them appropriately and put myself in situations where someone can tell me no. That last part may actually be one of the hardest.
I’ve learned that growing a small business requires being willing to be uncomfortable. You have to walk into businesses and introduce yourself. You have to hand someone your product and hope they see the potential in it. You have to hear “no” and still be willing to walk into the next place.
And sometimes you get a “yes.”
Those yeses mean so much more to me now because I understand everything that happened before them.
I’m still building my customer base. I’m still learning new equipment and techniques. I’m still figuring out which ideas will work and which ones won’t. I don’t consider those challenges something I went through on my way to success—they’re part of the stage I’m in right now.
But I’ve discovered that I’m much more willing to be a beginner than I used to be. I don’t have to know how to do everything before I start. I just have to be willing to learn, adjust and keep going.
And apparently, occasionally threaten a Silhouette Cameo when I spend hours trying to figure out how to do something and it still didn’t cut correctly.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I think what I’m most proud of is that I kept going.
Rainey’s Sweet Treats is still a small and growing business, so I can’t point to a huge sales number or a storefront and say, “Look what I built.” Not yet, anyway.
What I can say is that I took something that began during one of the hardest periods of my life and continued nurturing it until it became something I was brave enough to take seriously.
I’m proud every time a customer trusts me to be a small part of an important moment in their life. Cookies may seem like a simple thing, but they’re often connected to something much bigger—a birthday, a wedding, a new baby, a graduation, a holiday or another milestone someone wants to remember. Knowing that something I created gets to sit on that table is pretty special to me.
I’m also incredibly proud of how much I’ve been willing to learn. If I don’t know how to do something, my first response has become, “Okay, how can I learn?” Whether that’s a new decorating technique, creating a stencil, designing a cookie cutter or figuring out an entirely new piece of equipment, I’m constantly trying to expand what I’m capable of offering.
As for what sets Rainey’s Sweet Treats apart, I think it’s the amount of care that goes into each order.
My cookies aren’t sitting in a freezer waiting for someone to purchase them. They’re made to order specifically for the customer receiving them. Each cookie is individually packaged and heat-sealed, and with custom orders, I spend a lot of time thinking about the person or event I’m creating them for.
I don’t want someone to feel like they simply ordered cookies. I want them to open the box and feel like someone genuinely cared about what they were celebrating.
And because I’m still small, I’m able to be very hands-on. My customers aren’t ordering from a large production line—they’re talking to the person who will design their cookies, make the dough, decorate them, package them and probably worry far too much about whether they love them when they open the box.
I’m also beginning to bring that same philosophy into the wholesale side of my business. I don’t want to simply drop cookies off at a business and collect an invoice. I want to understand what their customers respond to, create products that make sense for their particular store and build relationships where we can grow together.
Maybe that’s what I’m ultimately most proud of.
Rainey’s Sweet Treats is still becoming whatever it’s going to become. But no matter how much it grows, I want it to retain the thing it started with: making something by hand, with care, that brings somebody a little bit of happiness.
What are your plans for the future?
I’m looking forward to what happens next knowing that, wherever I land, the journey was filled with love, excitement, thoughtfulness and supported by those I love.
Pricing:
- Custom decorated cookies start at $40.00 a dozen
- Business bundles are $25.00 for 6 cookies that come in a boutique box
- Traditional, non decorated cookies start at $15.00 a dozen
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Raineysstg.com
- Instagram: Raineys_sweet_treats
- Facebook: Raineys Sweettreats
