Iconic Brisbane bakery, Cakes & Sh!t is on the market, complete with full staff, lease in the heart of Paddington, and a well-established brand and customer base—but BYO dirty mind!

Owner Sam Fitzpatrick is ready to move onto new projects, which are still under wraps but described as “bakery adjacent”, and now needs the right sailor to captain the ship.

“I’ve been at the helm for just over four years now and it’s just time,” Sam told Baking Business.

“I feel like I’ve grown it to as big as I can grow it and now it’s maybe time for someone else to take it over.”

The bakery and shop, which gained a cult following in its original Fortitude Valley location for its naughty cakes and ‘curse cookies’, recently moved to Given Terrace, Paddington, where Sam says business is booming with consistent foot traffic.

“It’s really great, it’s so good here. It’s a lot more chill, and more consistent, whereas in the Valley you’d have zero days, then you’d have days that were twice as busy as you were expecting. You just could never predict the flow of people through the Valley,” Sam said.

Although there have been plenty of enquiries and interest, Sam is waiting for the right person to come along.

“Selling a business takes a lot of time—you’re not always lucky enough to find the right person at the right time,” she said.

“And it has to be the right person. I can’t just pass the keys on to someone the team isn’t going to like—the team comes first.”

The business has a team of seven, and the space itself has its kitchen and retail space side-by-side, allowing days where only one person needs to be there because they can see the front-of-house while working in the kitchen.

Additionally, there is a large office area out back which is already kitchen-approved.

“The space itself it perfect for expansion, because we’ve got this really large office area out the back that connects to the kitchen, which I’ve kept purposely empty because the plan is to knock the wall down as we expand—or as the new owner expands—and extend the kitchen out here,” Sam said.

“Or, you could literally run two separate businesses from here.”

Although Sam would like to see Cakes & Sh!t continue its risqué journey, she acknowledges it may not be everyone’s cup of tea.

“We’re not for everybody, and some people might be intimidated by that,” she said.

“But at the end of the day, it’s still a cake business with a super talented team, amazing equipment and an already set customer base.

“Realistically, our brand is Cakes & Sh!t, and we post a lot of our naughty and funny things, but they’re really only maybe 20 per cent of our menu and the custom cakes we do every week.

“The rest of it is just your normal, run-of-the-mill cakes that everyone makes. We don’t post them because they’re not necessarily brand-aligned, but if someone came in who didn’t necessarily want to make edible dicks, you could cut that out and still be running at a healthy profit.”

With a great team running a smooth operation, you don’t even need to be a baker necessarily.

“If you’re not a cake maker and just want to step into a business that’s completely under management and profitable, and then just check in and steer the ship, you can do that too.”