Clayton Woman's Dessert Company Supports Fair Trade

resident Andrea Reubin said her experience as a social worker showed her how difficult it can be for people to make a living wage. Now, she's baking to change that.

Reubin owns Just Sweets Desserts, an online business that ships high-end cakes, cookies and other desserts throughout St. Louis and the U.S. The Internet storefront has been open for about six months. She considers it her goal to "take a delicious bite out of poverty through fair trade."

Reubin and her husband, Gary Goodman, are from Ann Arbor, MI. During her time there in social work, she had the opportunity to work with a teenage migrant worker. The teen lived in a trailer with numerous family members, Reubin said. She didn't go to school. Reubin found herself struck by the difficult situations the teen faced.

Later, Reubin began to wonder where her cheap food came from. She went to business school and learned about social entrepreneurship. The idea of becoming a baker followed.

"It makes perfect sense, even though it's not a straight path," she said. She has a sweet tooth and prefers to have the best desserts possible. She made her own birthday cake this year—an Italian sponge cake with buttercream icing and toasted pistachios.

The couple moved to the St. Louis area about 20 years ago. They lived in University City and later Wildwood before relocating to Clayton.

Now, Reubin experiments with recipes at her home kitchen before heading to the Midtown Enterprise Center in St. Louis city to bake the goods she'll sell.

Kellee Sikes is a principal at P3 Strategies, the marketing firm that works with Reubin on her company. Reubin found P3 through another St. Louis-based fair-trade group, Partners for Just Trade. Sikes said what separates Reubin from other business owners is her lifestyle. She and her husband have managed three backyard bee hives for the past five years, and she makes an effort to use sustainably grown and organic ingredients when fair-trade ones aren't available.

"It's not just a line, it's not just a business strategy," Sikes said.

Sikes said while brand loyalty plays a role in the purchase of necessities, people are more likely to purchase other items if they feel they have a relationship with the maker of the products. Fair trade fits into that mold because purchasers can know that the people who grew ingredients such as cacao and sugar cane are getting paid a living wage and able to send their kids to school, she said.

"The value of their dollar is going a lot further," Sikes said.

P3 begins by holding three or four meetings with clients such as Reubin to learn how the business operates and to make sure it is following fair-trade practices.

Fair Trade USA is the organization responsible for certifying most of Reubin's baked goods. She identifies fair-trade ingredients using a label on their packaging. Nearly all of them are available locally, and she sends away for the remainder of them.

Consumers can sign up to receive a seasonal dessert using the Just Desserts subscription service, Reubin said.

Goodman, Reubin's husband, said their work with bees is representative of his wife's desire to help whomever she can. They started the bee work several years ago because of the stress the insects were experiencing. In a good year, they can collect 250 pounds of honey per colony. They donate the proceeds of their sales to the .

"She is a very giving person," Goodman said.