The owners of Just Desserts hope to leverage a new $12 million bakery into a major share of the super-premium cake business.

The husband and wife were part of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury scene in the early 1970s when a friend suggested Elliot start supplying his restaurant with New York style cheesecakes. Sales took off, and in 1974 the couple sold their VW Bug to buy a 20-qt. mixer. Just Desserts was born, and over the next quarter century it would grow to include 10 retail bakeries and a production facility employing 140.