Page 18 - The Culture Report Issue #2

The Culture Report

It didn’t take long for the duo to get their business off the ground. Wright, who is 50, conceived the

name for “The Furlough Cheesecake” and quickly registered it on GoDaddy.com, an internet domain

registration site. She then applied for an employee identification number on the IRS’s website.

Howard, 48, already had her food handler license, and she enlisted her teenaged and college-aged

daughters to help create their website and promote the burgeoning business on social media.

The sisters have teamed up before on small business ideas. They created a to-go meal service to assist

parents sending their kids with food off to camp a few years ago. That only lasted one summer, they say,
since it was a lot of hard work for little cash.

But interest in The Furlough Cheesecake grew fairly quickly, the sisters say, particularly because of the
difficult time it has arrived in. This past Monday, the sisters were working on about 10 orders. By

Wednesday evening, that number grew close to 200 — with requests coming in from as far as Alaska,

California, and Washington state. Since launching 10 days ago, they haven’t turned a profit yet, but the

rush of orders has already helped balance out their expenses.

“We had to pool our resources to purchase everything to put this together,” Wright says. “Just to see

that we have a balance, it’s like having a paycheck there. We know that some of those things that we’re

facing we’ll now be able to take care of.”

For now, they both hope the

business can help them make ends

meet. Howard has an electricity

bill and her daughter’s college
tuition due date is coming up.

Wright has been struggling to get

her mortgage company to allow

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