Soft, vibrant laughter, warm lighting, heady wafts of chocolate in the air, a scene of welcome for everyone.
Hot Cakes Molten Chocolate Cakery is a love letter to the Puget Sound and her community of Seattleites. From a stand at the Farmers Market to locations in Capitol Hill, Ballard and SoDo, Hot Cakes is making its mark on the Washington community and food scene.
Even after coming under new ownership in 2020 and working to regain momentum post-COVID, the business is a thriving scene of sweets and laughter.
Their brand motto, “be honest stay true” drives both directors and employees in how they cultivate the experience and atmosphere.
For both Forest and Alexis Newsom, who work at the Capitol Hill location, the brand motto makes their working experience highly enjoyable.
“I would say the team is really great. We try to fit together really cohesive teams, people like that like to have a lot of fun, but also have attention to detail, focus and motive. It’s one of the best things,” Forest shared.
Newsom also echoed that the team is her favorite part.
“It’s one of those really rare experiences in food service where you just get to genuinely feel valued and respected by everyone there,” Newsom said.
She also shared the employees’ involvement beyond day-to-day tasks.
“We can help make drinks and different menu items if we bring suggestions to higher management on things we’d like to see,” Newsom said. “They’re usually pretty accommodating and are like, ‘Oh, yeah, that sounds great.’ And so we have a couple of menu items that either Forest has created or someone else on staff has, so that’s pretty cool too.”
Currently on the menu for their shake of the month, Newsom created a strawberry matcha milkshake, which is the perfect blend of fresh sweetness and creamy subtlety.
Austin Crider, director of operations, talked about how the Washington experience is at the heart of Hot Cakes.
“Being a northwest company, you know, having a presence with the great outdoors [is important]. We have a whole product line—not necessarily anymore—but we’ve had a wilderness collection in the past,” Crider said. “We still have some desserts that kind of tie into that, our smoked chocolate chips are supposed to mimic, you know, growing up camping and fishing, the smell of the outdoors and doing s’mores.”
Beyond creating a warm environment, Hot Cakes has been an avid part of the community, which just lends to their authentic nature. During the pandemic, under the previous ownership, the business had a campaign where they delivered 1,000 cookies a day to nurses.
One of their biggest partnerships is with Washington Wild, an organization that works on preserving wild lands in Washington.
“The state of Washington and the outdoors—basically our wild and farmland has been really at the core of hot cakes and our belief system. Washington Wild advocates for the preservation of wild or wild places, and so we really kept that at the heart of everything we do,” Crider said.
During Earth Week, they will typically partner up with Washington Wild to highlight their work. For the past three years, they have had a molten cake called the Salted Caramel Molten Cake, which ties into themes of salmon population, the Puget Sound and local water waves.
Since 2021, Hot Cakes has also partnered with Dog Gone Seattle, a dog adoption center in Seattle.
“We might do adoption events with them once or twice a year. In the past, it’s been out of our Ballard location. We have our outdoor pergola and will typically do it on a Sunday, with the farmers market going on and there’s foot traffic,” Crider said.
Hot Cakes is as committed to its community as it is to its craft for sweets; in fact, both seem to go hand-in-hand. Their approach to giving back shows that restaurants can play a leadership role in nurturing the community just as well as feeding people good food.
For Zainab Khan, currently a student at Bellevue College applying for Seattle U’s Nursing Program (hint hint cough cough @sunursing), Hot Cakes has consistently been a late-night sweet treat..
“90% of the time when we come here, like, on birthdays, it’s literally because it’s the only place that’s open. I think because it’s open so late, that’s why a lot of people end up here,” Khan said. “So you come here at like 10, 11 p.m., and it’s the busiest that you’ll find it because everyone is here for dessert, a little sweet treat after 10 p.m. I think that’s what makes the atmosphere so inviting and enticing.”
Hot Cakes has proven itself to be not just a high-quality dessert business but also an outstanding pillar of the Seattle community. Their dedication to staying true to their values of honesty makes them a business that locals can trust because they genuinely invest in the people and community they serve.
