We Are Cortex | Ismael Wayne

Of all the possible paths to entrepreneurship, banana pudding might not show up on anyone’s bingo card. But newly married, out of work and earning nothing for the household, Ismael Wayne started filling time with pans of banana pudding for his friends and family.

What was once just a tasty dessert became a business when a spoonful of his pudding reached the lips of a friend and mentor in the restaurant business. Today, Wayne’s business, Puddin Puddin, sells pans of pudding, mousse and a wide variety of cheesecakes from his website. His creations are also sold at The Foundry’s Fresh Thyme Market, Mac’s Local Eats and Your Place Diner in St. Louis City and the Latté Lounge’s Florissant location.

Now, Wayne’s single-mindedly focused on swiping any piece of market share he can from Big Dessert — the Sara Lees and Cheesecake Factories of the world — as he scales his Cortex-based business. So much so, in fact, that he once created a makeshift kitchen in a Dallas hotel room to bake pudding for classmates in a restaurateurs’ certification course.

“I want to ensure that whatever piece they have, I'm just going to take a little bit and then a little more until they realize this up-and-comer is really taking our spot,” he said. “And by the time you realize that — it's too late.”

His sweet path into founding and running a business — “building it step by step, pan by pan” — took a direct course through Cortex’s Square One Bootcamp program. The program showed Wayne how to take a simple idea, baking banana pudding, and scale it into a business — complete with expectations for pricing, building a supply chain and managing growth.

“Everybody's gonna love my product. It's going to grow big,” Wayne said. “But a lot of businesses can get ruined because they scale too fast.”

Beyond the coursework, the network of founders he’s created in Cortex is invaluable, Wayne said, because they show up for his company in rooms he didn’t even know he needed to be in. “With Cortex, you know that you have an advocate for your business, even if you don't realize it. You get an email saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got a vendor event. You want to come?’ It's always encouraging to know you have that type of advocacy in your corner.”

We Are Cortex celebrates the individuals who power our vibrant district.