On a stretch of South Fairfax Avenue dotted by Ethiopian restaurants and thrift stores stands a maker of cakes that has been catering to Hollywood’s A-list for nearly 60 years.
Hansen’s Cakes has produced thousands of elaborate concoctions, from two-story wedding cakes dressed in butter cream and Grand Marnier frosting to specialty birthday cakes made for the likes of John Wayne, Bob Hope and Johnny Carson.
But five years ago another cakemaker came to Fairfax Avenue–not just down the street, not just next door but jammed into a storefront between Hansen’s bakery and showroom.
Regal Cake Gallery quickly emerged as a formidable competitor.
The arrangement puzzles and amuses those who come across the battling bakeries. With Regal’s display window filled with cakes, surrounded on both sides by display windows filled with Hansen’s treats, customers often walk into one shop thinking it’s the other.
Competition between the two businesses has gone well beyond who bakes the best cake.
Accusations of thievery
There have been accusations of recipe thieving, chef pirating, and claims that one baker secretly called health inspectors out to the other. Both bakers say they are trying to achieve a detente.
“The employees between the two shops have a good relationship; we speak to each other,” says Jennifer Center, a Regal sales clerk. “But there’s institutional tension. How can you have a good relationship with your competitor?”
The rivalry belies the sugary happiness that both shops exude. Each bakery is filled with cakes of all shapes and sizes–a champagne bottle with an edible ice bucket, a soccer ball resting on a field of green frosting. A cake castle stands 5 feet tall, with sugar-encrusted spires and a cream ivy overhang.
Kirk Rossberg, president of the California Retail Bakers Association and a former Hansen’s employee, said the side-by-side-by-side competition is the talk of Los Angeles baking circles.
“It’s gutsy, and pretty bizarre,” Rossberg said of Regal. “It’s a little surprising to go up against somebody that is strong and has such a well-known cake.”
In the 1980s, Hansen’s Cakes expanded its operation, but in an unusual way. In 1983, the only space available was two storefronts away–a Chinese restaurant was in between. Real estate was scarce, so Hansen’s snatched up the vacant store.
Today, Patrick Hansen, 41, oversees 27 employees producing nearly 100 cakes a day. He says the secret to their success is a patented cake mix–a concoction of several hundred ingredients known only to people whose last name is Hansen.
A few degrees variance in room temperature can send a batch of batter into the garbage. Refrigerator humidity must be perfect.
Use found for space tech
He places his cake pans on a composite used for heat-shield tiles on the Apollo space missions. It costs more than $100,000, but Hansen says he can taste the difference.
Through the 1990s, Hansen’s continued to grow, eventually adding showrooms in Beverly Hills and the Tarzana section of Los Angeles. One day word came that the restaurant standing between their Fairfax showroom and bakery was about to shut down after an unsuccessful run as an Ethiopian eatery. The family set its sights on finally uniting its operation.
But then entered Rosa Leung.
Compared to the Hansen family, Leung is new to the cake business. After migrating to California from Taiwan in 1979, she worked as an accountant and ran an import-export business that handled zippers, electrical motors and other steel products.
But she always was interested in food. She was a nutritionist by training, and her father worked in the sugar industry.
Tired by the grind of her export business, it came to her one day: wedding cakes.
“A happy business,” she says. “It’s one of the reasons I jumped in.”
In 1995 she and her husband bought Regal Cake Gallery, a 44-year-old bakery in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. Within a year, Leung said, she heard that Hansen’s might be interested in selling their business on Fairfax Avenue. She spotted the vacant storefront between Hansen’s bakery and showroom and leased it, anticipating, she says, that she eventually would own Hansen’s and simply knock out the walls.
The Hansens dispute her story, saying it was Leung who approached them and offered to buy the business. They said there was a bidding war for the vacant space, and Leung ultimately made the better offer.
In January 1999 she opened her second Regal Cake Gallery–right in the middle of Hansen’s Cakes. And she catered to the same clientele that made Hansen’s famous.
Regal made birthday cakes for Bill Clinton and Tipper Gore, as well as a cake for George Clooney when he left “ER.”
For the movie “American Wedding,” Regal made nine five-tiered cakes used in the banquet scene. Customers have asked for the same cake so many times that Regal includes it in its catalog, priced at $1,000.
The Hansens were outraged when Leung decided to open shop in the middle of their business. But the family learned from a lawyer that there was nothing they could do.
Relationships between the two were rocky from the start.
A pastry chef left Hansen’s after 16 years on the job. A month later, he started at Regal.
“She went after our ex-employees,” said Gary Hansen, Patrick’s father. Leung insists the chef approached her–and only after leaving Hansen’s.
Then Los Angeles County health inspectors made a surprise visit to Regal. Leung said the inspectors told her that someone made an anonymous complaint against the bakery. The Hansens deny they had anything to do with it.
The Hansens accuse Leung of sending family members into their bakery to try free samples, so she could figure out what ingredients they were using.
Leung laughs off the charge: “There are other Asian people, not just me.”
Both stores said the competition ultimately has improved each of their businesses.
“When Regal bought it, we started to clean up our bakeries, repainted, got the cobwebs out of our windows and opened up a bigger showroom,” Patrick Hansen said.
Leung said the competition pushed her to conjure new designs. One recent creation is a four-layer cake fashioned like Tiffany gift boxes.
