Car­ol Quash

‘Tis the sea­son for par­ties, drinks, and desserts, so it’s no sur­prise to find Mindy Romero Mollineau’s well-laid-out dessert cart adding to the fes­tive am­bi­ence of any Christ­mas event. Her ar­ray of deca­dent cakes, cook­ies, and brown­ies—with as many dif­fer­ent top­pings—is a dream come true for peo­ple who don’t count calo­ries, and maybe even for those who do.

Mollineau comes from a fam­i­ly who knows their way around the kitchen—from a good pelau to an ex­trav­a­gant Sun­day spread. Al­though she in­her­it­ed the culi­nary gene and some­times does cater­ing, she has tak­en a spe­cial lik­ing to cre­at­ing desserts.

“From as ear­ly as when I wrote SEA (Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment), my mom sent me to do my first bak­ing course, and that’s when I start­ed to bake,” Mollineau told WE.

Her ca­reer path took her in a dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion, but some­how it still merged with her de­sire to cre­ate an ex­pe­ri­ence for peo­ple with a sweet tooth.

In 2007, as a Qual­i­ty As­sur­ance of­fi­cer at Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour, she reg­is­tered Minz De­lights and in­tro­duced her sweet treats to the mar­ket, putting her ter­tiary-lev­el train­ing in at­ten­tion to de­tail in­to every stage of pro­duc­tion and de­liv­ery. She had al­so stud­ied busi­ness at the sec­ondary school lev­el and lat­er in­vest­ed in bak­ing and cake-dec­o­rat­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

“I start­ed off with spe­cialised cakes; so I would do birth­days, wed­dings, an­niver­saries—you know, cakes for all dif­fer­ent events. Then I start­ed do­ing dessert buf­fets, and af­ter that, I went in­to food cater­ing.”

She re­cent­ly launched her mo­bile dessert cart, in­spired by a trend she ob­served in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. The con­cept be­hind the dessert cart is to give peo­ple more cus­tomised op­tions when se­lect­ing a dessert.

“You have dif­fer­ent flavours of cakes, ic­ings, top­pings, sprin­kles, and driz­zles. Peo­ple can choose whichev­er flavour they want, top it with what­ev­er they want, and cre­ate a dessert ex­act­ly how they like it.”

Mollineau has start­ed tak­ing her cart to pop-up shops, which she us­es to meet new cus­tomers and net­work. But she main­ly mar­kets her prod­ucts us­ing a hy­brid sys­tem.

“I find that at the pop-ups, most of the peo­ple who came to buy from me saw it on my IG page. So­cial me­dia—Face­book, In­sta­gram, and Tik­Tok—and word of mouth are my two biggest mar­ket­ing av­enues. I al­so get a lot of re­fer­rals.”

She is in the process of build­ing a web­site, through which she plans to launch an on­line store. Her ul­ti­mate dream, how­ev­er, is to open a cake and cof­fee shop.

“I’ve al­ways want­ed my desserts and food to be an ex­pe­ri­ence for peo­ple. I want­ed it to be a place where peo­ple could come in, spend time, en­joy a good meal or a dessert, and just re­lax. It’s al­ways been about cre­at­ing an ex­pe­ri­ence.”

Mean­while, she is work­ing on ex­pand­ing the cart ex­pe­ri­ence with savoury and fruit op­tions. Mollineau said her dessert cart ini­tia­tive is fair­ly new, and she has not yet been booked for many Christ­mas events. But she will be do­ing fruit cakes, punche-de-crème cheese­cake, and oth­er desserts by spe­cial or­ders.

“I’m do­ing those in ear­ly De­cem­ber be­cause I’m clos­ing off the sec­ond week of De­cem­ber, and I’ll re­open in Jan­u­ary.”

The North East­ern Col­lege, San­gre Grande alum­na is a sin­gle moth­er of two and said peo­ple of­ten ask how she man­ages it all.

“I tell them I don’t sleep.”

She is al­ready think­ing ahead to 2026, when she be­lieves things will re­al­ly “shoot off” for Minz De­lights.

“Car­ni­val is com­ing up, along with dif­fer­ent events and oth­er things peo­ple will ask about. I’ve al­ready start­ed putting to­geth­er pack­ages for those. So I think next year is the year.”