Business has been sweet for Brown Sugar Bakery since a visit by Vice President Kamala Harris.
After Harris visited the Chicago-based bakery on Tuesday, the shop received a massive influx of orders, prompting owner Stephanie Hart to bring in staff on their day off to bake, according to WLS-TV. In-store retail sales jumped 21% overall, and online sales increased 88%, Hart told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Hart told the Washington Examiner she hired a new part-time employee as a result of the business surge.
“Vice President Harris’s visit not only boost[ed] the spirit of my community but it encouraged new customers to visit our location and our online store. … It’s been a welcome boost,” she wrote in an email to the Washington Examiner. “Also other businesses on my block are seeing the benefit as well.”
While Hart was not physically present for Harris’s visit, that didn’t diminish her excitement.
“I’m freaking out still,” Hart, the bakery’s founder, told WLS-TV after Harris’s visit.
Mianca Strode, an employee, called Harris “down to earth” and said she felt “empowered” by the vice president’s visit.
Hart dismissed the criticism from some on the Right who said Harris, who was given a lead role managing the surge of migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border by President Joe Biden, should have traveled south instead.
“It’s mostly sad,” she told the outlet. “I just don’t understand how you can equate those two things.”
Hart said she received racist emails since the bakery welcomed the vice president, but she “pass[es] over the nasty emails” because “everyone is welcomed at Brown Sugar Bakery.”
“They’re not going to rain on our parade,” she added. “They’re just not.”
The United States is contending with a large number of migrants, particularly unaccompanied minors, crossing the southern border, and the Biden administration is facing pressure not only to address the situation but to call it a “crisis.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki defended Harris’s decision to visit Chicago, where she said the vice president’s goal was “to talk COVID and the importance of communities getting the vaccine when it’s available and accessible to them.”
“And so, while she was there, like many Americans, she got a snack,” Psaki added. “I think she’s allowed to do that.”
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More than 100,000 migrants were encountered at the border in February, authorities say, and reports indicate an unprecedented 117,000 migrant children will enter the U.S. by the end of the year. The most recent border surge saw the arrival of 80,000 unaccompanied minors at the southwestern border in 2019.
