Mr. Leslie’s Cheesecakes ‘comes full circle’ with first standalone location

A beloved local bakery has moved out of the Allen Neighborhood Center’s accelerator kitchen and into the building where the concept was born.

Mr. Leslie’s Cheesecakes, which began operating out of the Allen Center’s incubator kitchen in 2019 and moved to the Rathbun Accelerator Kitchen when it opened in 2021, opened its first standalone location in Holt last week. The new location is the former Incu-BaKe incubator kitchen, where Marcus Leslie first tried his hand at running a cheesecake business more than a decade ago.

“In the end, I didn’t have the courage to start,” Leslie said. “So, this is kind of full circle for me.”

Leslie said the Allen Center gave him “the room and the space to make mistakes.” Since starting there, he’s become a staple at the Meridian Farmers Market and has expanded the business to include wholesale. Mr. Leslie’s Cheesecakes are sold in the Detroit, Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo areas at 12 Meijer stores and other grocery stores, including Fresh Thyme Market.

Leslie said having the space to stumble at the Allen Center helped him succeed.

“As a business owner, you need to be okay with making mistakes and have the opportunity to make them, to grow,” he said. “It was the space where we learned how to serve 50, 100, 1,000 customers.”

Also helpful was Matt Jones, the Allen Center’s kitchen and facility manager. Jones’ experience in the culinary industry helped Leslie learn “some of the nuances that we were unfamiliar with.”

When asked what led him to move out of the Allen Center, Jones said it had been long overdue, but he was waiting until he found the right space.

“We had cheesecakes literally spilling over in the freezers at the Allen Neighborhood Center,” he said. “This gives the capability to produce more, to hold more, to sell more, to provide more happiness for the community.”

While the new space gives Leslie the opportunity to expand wholesale production, it also affords the chance to expand retail offerings.

“We get to experiment and offer a wider variety of flavors,” he said, which vary by week at the retail space. Flavors this week (April 15 through 19) are strawberry shortcake, banana pudding, mocha, lemon drop, cherry, blueberry and strawberry supreme. Cheesecakes are sold in personal and family sizes.

Leslie said Holt gave the store “the best welcome ever.” In the two days after its soft opening, Mr. Leslie’s sold 500 cheesecakes, having to close for a day to restock.

Still in that soft opening phase, Leslie is enjoying meeting new customers. He said a core operating principle is to “treat everyone like family.”

“When you walk in, whether it’s the first time or the second or the hundredth time we see a customer, we want you to know that we appreciate you,” he said. “For a lot of our customers, it’s the end of a bad week or a bad day, or they just need a pick-me-up, and this provides them with that happiness and joy. That’s our goal.”