Businesses Buzz in Madisonville

Local entrepreneurs shine up this hidden gem of a neighborhood.
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Cheesecakery and Bramble Bubbly Owner Liz Field.

Photograph by Catherine Viox

After emerging from years of economic distress, Madisonville is a real Cincinnati Cinderella story. Medpace, with its sprawling campus and associated building projects, has a lot to do with this transformation. New businesses are also popping up in the historic business district, creating a homegrown movement for economic sustainability. And Liz Field is pretty much at the center of it all.

“I’m a sixth-generation resident,” she explains. “Both sides of my family immigrated to Madisonville. My dad’s family’s from Germany, my mom’s from Sicily, and my mom’s family had a grocery store in the community for 80 years.”

Photograph by Catherine Viox

Field continues the familial legacy of serving up sustenance to the east side neighborhood with a family of food-centric businesses of her own. She opened a bubble tea shop called Bramble Bubbly on Bramble Avenue last summer. Then there’s her soft-serve ice cream shop, Whetsel Whip. And, of course, her flagship business is The Cheesecakery, the bakery she opened in 2009 and expanded into a brick-and-mortar in 2019 after years of refining her skills in the kitchen.

“I never planned on opening my own business, but I couldn’t find a job that I really wanted to do after graduating from UC,” she explains. “My friend was like, Why don’t you come over and bake with me?

Photograph by Catherine Viox

This was in 2009, during the Great Recession, and Field was feeling the national malaise. Though she had no previous experience as a baker (I’d always known baking as a cake box mix”), she felt her mood lift as the two made cinnamon rolls and cheesecake, and the baking sessions became a regular affair.” I was just blown away,” she says. “Like, This is so cool that my hands made something you can eat!

Baking sparked joy for Field, but she was still seeking a career when a mentor suggested she combine her business education from UC with her burgeoning kitchen skills to establish an entrepreneurial endeavor. She took the advice, creating tasty treats in her home kitchen for family and friends. “I just baked anything and everything,” she recalls. “I was just so excited about it.”

She followed her passion to culinary school, expanding her baking skills while also making important connections. All the while she continued home baking and began wholesaling her goods to cafes and restaurants, leveraging experience as a restaurant worker to make inroads with buyers.

Field might have been happy to continue her home operation indefinitely were it not for a twist of fate and those important Madisonville family ties. Ready to retire, her mom said she was going to put her mobile food truck business to bed, but Field offered to help keep the wheels turning. “We had 30 stops within five hours, which is a big undertaking,” she says. Serving food out of the truck got her thinking about her own baking business and the potential for a food truck. She joined CO.STARTERS, ArtWorks’ nine-week business development program, and narrowed her niche to cheesecakes.

Photograph by Catherine Viox

And voila, The Cheesecakery food truck was born. ” I did the food truck for three or four years before I decided I wanted to expand,” she recalls. “And I knew I was ready to expand when I had to start cancelling events because I would bake all night and run out of space.”

Madisonville was an obvious choice, as she figured her family and friends would continue to support her in a brick-and-mortar location. “It’s home, you know,” she says. “It’s kind of cool, and you can actually see my family’s grocery store from the front door of my shop.”

Field’s friends and family did show up to support her, as did the community of Madisonville and, as time went on, folks from all over Cincinnati. She changed her menus numerous times and expanded with a commissary kitchen, and indoor dining room, and a second food truck. She earned the title “serial entrepreneur” as additional business ideas grew out of The Cheesecakery, including Hurry Curry, Ryan Saadawi’s flavor-forward business that the bakery’s general manager started during the COVID-19 pandemic using one of its food trucks. (He now rents a pop-up space from Field on Bramble.)

Hurry Curry founder Ryan Saadawi.

Photograph by Catherine Viox

But the thing about being part of a Next Big Thing neighborhood, even as a cornerstone, is that one has to go through the before to get to the after, and Madisonville is still in its process of becoming. “I remember in 2008 during the recession, there was like, buy-one-get-one houses in Madisonville,” Saadawi says.

Something of a serial entrepreneur himself, the doctor of chemistry (he has a Ph.D. from UC) got his start in self-employment with a snow cone truck he purchased from his sister. The mobile food venture led him to a food truck event for animal welfare where he met Field, who eventually invited him to be a part of The Cheesecakery.

“Growing up, I was always telling people, I live in Madisonville, and they’re like, Oh my god!” Field laughs. “But I was always proud, and I was kind of happy it was a hidden gem.”

A selection of dishes from Hurry Curry.

Photograph by Catherine Viox

Just a handful of years later, Madisonville is certainly shining brighter, with businesses like Mom ‘n ’em Coffee, Element Eatery, and Walls of Wellness joining Field and Saadawi in the revitalized business district. And for their part, the two plan to keep growing Madisonville one business at a time, inviting friends to start businesses as well as plotting their own next ventures.

“Once you get a taste of it, it just keeps growing,” says Saadawi. “Who knows? Maybe there’s Italian down the road or something else fun.”

“I don’t want to be like, Oh, I’m doing all the things,” Field says. “But I do love coming up with concepts. I have a couple more ideas.”

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