Community Corner

Sugarush's Sweet Gesture

As if you needed even more incentive to eat a cupcake.

In the end, they’re all important. They’re all important and they’re all personal and they’re everything that Chris Paseka and Jesse Bello-Paseka have come to support simply because it’s always been the right thing to do.

Here, in this narrow space on Front Street where passing customers turn sideways to avoid bumping into each other, where each side of the shop is lined with either candy or confection, the name of the game is cupcakes, but that’s hardly what Sugarush is all about.

Since opening in Red Bank in January, Sugarush has donated a portion of the sales of its signature cupcake each month, the vanilla cream-stuffed, blue frosting-topped confetti cupcake named, appropriately, the Sugarush Cupcake, to various charities and organizations, both local and national.

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Paseka says it’s the least they can do, really. As new business owners making a go of it while working a legitimate 120 hours a week, Paseka regrets that he doesn’t have more time to spend in assistance to the community. As far as civic mindedness goes, this duo’s done more from behind the counter than anyone would ever dare ask.

Though all of the outlets Sugarush have donated to thus far mean something to both Paseka, 36, and Bello-Paseka, 31, this month’s charity may just have the most personal feeling of all. Sugarush is donating sales of its signature cupcake this month to the Trevor Project, an outreach program aimed at ending suicide among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and questioning, or LGBTQ, youth.

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This June isn’t just another Pride Month, one that was recognized in resolution by the Red Bank council at a recent meeting, this month also marks the one-year anniversary of the couple’s marriage. It’s an occasion that not only serves as validation of their loving relationship and a commitment made to each other, but a reminder that homosexuality, despite any progress, still remains a word whispered through lips, and, for the misguided, representative of an assault against tradition.

With the efforts of individuals and organizations like the Trevor Project coupled with campaigns like “It Gets Better,” things, Paseka feels, have started to change for the better.

“I know what it’s like to have those feelings,” Paseka, who didn’t come out formally until he was 30, said. “You feel like you’re trapped inside yourself and the fact that society puts these limitations on our children, it just kills me, it kills me to think that someone has to feel the way I felt at one point.”

It’s a feeling no one should have to endure and one Paseka still doesn’t fully understand. There’s so much more that makes a man a man. So many, as he calls them, “levels” to each person that identifying someone by something as trivial as their sexuality is as absurd as marginalizing someone based on race, gender, or even religious ideology.

If you’re going to starting handing out labels for Paseka and Bello-Paseka you’ve got plenty to choose from. Up there somewhere should be entrepreneur, followed by merchandiser, designer, social networking wizard and finally pastry chef – though just for Bello-Paseka, he’s the one manning the spatula behind the curtain.

Throw in risk takers for good measure. Sugarush, you could say, was the product of impulse, a decision made by two men looking for a new adventure and willing to leave an apartment, jobs, and a former life in New York City to start a business from something a bit more serious than a hobby.

“We literally just took a chance in a bad economy, in a town with a bunch of empty storefronts,” he said. “We took a complete leap of faith. Red Bank was just the place to be, it has this amazing energy you can’t find anywhere else.”

Sugarush is the kind of place children imagine in their sweetest dreams, a place they write about in large block letters in composition books with shaky crayons above crudely drawn pictures of chocolate kingdoms, cookie forests, and marshmallow clouds.

The smell you find when you step inside and up to the counter is that special brand of comforting, the kind of smell that lingers in the air, permeating clothing and all types of fabric. The unmistakable product of some perfect combination of flour, sugar, and butter set at 350 degrees.

Bulk candy is stacked in tubes hanging against one wall and on the other, a counter full of cupcakes, undressed, or, as the owners like to say “naked,” invites customers to imagine and invent any one of tens of thousands of available combinations.

It’s a business that has spawned two others like it in the same relatively small downtown. It’s a business Paseka has already qualified a success, though he says they’re still working on paying down some of those credit cards.

“We dropped everything to start this business,” he said. “We left our jobs, we left our apartment to just come here and do something in a small town. We really wanted to be a part of something like this.”

The idea germinated shortly after the couple was married. Bello-Paseka was already doing some commercial baking out of their apartment and eventually – that being just a few months after their nuptials – they decided to take the leap and open a shop in Red Bank. With both men having worked in the service industry, Paseka said they knew they had the chops to make a run at this thing. And, for the first time they’d be working for themselves.

It would be hard for things to be better, though Paseka said a day off eventually would be a welcome change. Not only does Sugarush have delicious fare and a near half-year jump on the competition, but they’re also serving a popular product in a unique way.

Dressing your own cupcake is the highlight of the Sugarush experience. The shop also caters events and parties, taking the DIY cupcakes on the road and earning rave reviews along the way.

“It was just about doing things differently,” Paseka said, standing over a counter filled with all types of varieties of cupcake, including the daily special, a triple-chocolate raspberry cupcake. “It’s about empowering people to do something differently. We realized this could work if we kept it simply. As long as you offered classic flavors, classic combinations, classic add-ons, it could work.”

So far, the public has responded to Sugarush’s efforts. A steady stream of customers hits the store all throughout the day, many of them saying they’ve arrived here on someone else’s recommendation. Sugarush also hosts parties in the back of its store in a modest room with a bar and a couch and weekend catering jobs have started piling up.

“I can’t say enough about our customers. They make us smile every day. I thought I was going to have to be the one making people smile, but it’s been the other way every single day.”

For more information, including hours of operation, service and products available, visit the Sugarush website by clicking here.


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