Throughout the summer, Skandalaris Center Summer Internship Program participants will be writing guest blog posts about their internship experience. Following is one such post. 

The Sweetest of Internships 

By Elizabeth Davidson (BU ’21)

My name is Elizabeth Davidson and I am studying healthcare management at WashU. This summer I am interning for Sweetology, an entertainment dessert shop in Town and Country. At Sweetology you can drop in to decorate pre-baked cookies, cupcakes, and cakes as well as host parties of all sorts. They offer classes as well as summer decorating camp for elementary school kids. My overarching objective is to help them sell their decorating kits, which they ship nationwide. Here is their website: https://sweetology.com/

Kara Newmark, the founder of Sweetology, has given me the opportunity to work on a multitude of varied projects to gain diverse experience. First, my personal favorite project, I secret-shopped at their local competitors to create a report on how they compare to Sweetology and what can be learned from them, which was an incredibly fun task. I next wrote the feature Sweetology earned in a book featuring 100 top St. Louis Innovators, called Innovate St. Louis. This is the first published article I’ve written, so it was an excellent learning opportunity. I then shadowed in the store to see how everything is run behind the scenes by watching camp as well as a birthday party (see below).

I have had several ongoing projects as well. I am finding and contacting influencers on YouTube and Instagram, and bloggers to review and recommend the decorating kits. On a weekly basis, I write themed blog posts for the Sweetology website’s “Blogology” section. I am also working on analyzing the effectiveness of their radio ads as well as the effects of weather on sales through regression analysis, putting to work some of my skills from business statistics classes. Another project I am at work on is getting local universities to offer our decorating kits as care packages for students sold through their campus bookstores. Additionally, I have recently began attending corporate networking events to find clients to participate in team-building parties or who are looking for client or employee appreciation gifts, which has been a great personal networking experience as well. I am also contacting local sports teams to propose selling decorating kits as a fundraiser and designing the marketing materials for both the teams and the potential corporate clients. My next project is to decorate a cake and make a demonstration video similar to the popular Tasty videos, which I am excited about. Overall, my internship has been a wonderful learning experience so far in diverse areas of business and I look forward to the next month of projects!

Sweetology Instagram: @sweetsweetology; My Instagram: @elizabethsdavidson