The unexpected strategy that drove 20% revenue growth for this funnel cake cafe

During an unusually hot summer in Las Vegas in 2024, Denette Braud faced a difficult challenge: The extreme temperatures kept customers indoors, leaving Braud’s Funnel Cake Cafe — a business that thrives in foot traffic — with three months of drastically reduced visitors. After nearly twenty years in business, she feared this might be the moment that would force her to shut down.

But Braud had already taken a proactive step. She was taking courses from Verizon Small Business Digital Ready, a program that provides free online resources for small business owners. She focused on self-paced finance courses and Ask the Expert live events, such as Track Your Finances: Strategies to Strengthen and Streamline Your Financial Foundation, and Keep the Doors Open: Break Even Points and Cash Flow. “Those are the things that I never looked at in the beginning, and the things that will take a company down,” Braud says.

With a clearer understanding of her costs, pricing and what the business needed to stay profitable, Braud used her new insights to make concrete changes. After participating in a Growing Your Profit Margins live event, she applied a pricing adjustment that helped increase her revenue by 20% within a few months. She also became more intentional about planning for slow periods, to help stabilize the business during downturns. “Without Verizon, we may not have survived,” she says.

Braud turned to Digital Ready’s marketing coursework to strengthen her customer engagement strategy. She learned to evaluate her marketing spend by return on investment and began experimenting with promotions, email capture tools and customer-loyalty efforts, including offering order discounts and, soon, downloadable recipes. These changes helped grow her email subscriber list by more than 50% within months.

“I think it’s wonderful what Verizon is doing for small businesses because when I started, we had no resources,” she says.

Braud’s entrepreneurial journey began in 2006 with a pop-up tent and a long line of customers. Encouraged by the demand, she left her full-time job in 2012 to grow the company. Over time, the business expanded into a catering trailer, corporate partnerships and, by 2017, a brick-and-mortar cafe with a staff of six.

She later applied for and won a $10,000 small business grant from Digital Ready. She used the funds for payroll, freeing up money for operational costs.

Now, with renewed confidence, Braud is exploring franchising, expanded corporate partnerships, and growing the online sales of her signature funnel cake mix. She is also leveraging Digital Ready to help scale her business with AI, taking courses like AI and Customer Service: How Small Businesses Can Deliver Big Experiences and Activate Cutting-Edge Marketing Strategies with the Power of AI.

With best practices and strategies from Digital Ready, Braud is equipped to focus on what her business is really about: the people. “I love what I do. It’s one of those businesses that uplifts people,” says Braud. “It’s all about happy customers.”

Verizon Small Business Digital Ready is part of Verizon’s goal to support 1 million small businesses by 2030 with free resources to help them succeed. To sign up, visit Verizon Small Business Digital Ready. Visit CitizenVerizon.com to learn more about the company’s responsible business efforts. An individual user's experience may vary and results are not guaranteed.