On Labor Day, Greg and LaTanya Miller took two pound cakes to a cookout. They weren’t launching a business. They were bringing dessert. Then someone tasted it.

“I would buy this cake from you,” the woman told them.

Other people heard her and wanted one, too. By the time about 10 people had said they would pay for the Millers’ pound cake, the couple started thinking they might have something more than a family favorite on their hands.

On Sept. 9, Killer Miller Pound Cake received its first order. One month later, the Millers had reached over six dozen orders.

“Seventy-five orders without trying,” Greg said, still sounding a little amazed by what has happened. “I’ve tried to do a lot of things in life. This is taking no effort.”

Killer Miller Pound Cake Started With a Folded Sheet of Loose-Leaf Paper

Killer Miller Pound Cake itself goes back decades, to an Eagles tradition, a closely guarded recipe, the death of Greg’s father and a folded sheet of loose-leaf paper that LaTanya kept tucked inside a recipe book.

Greg and LaTanya met in 1989, when they were 15. LaTanya went to Central High School in Philadelphia, while Greg attended Willingboro High School in New Jersey. Both had struggled with algebra in ninth grade, so their parents sent them to Rittenhouse Academy for summer school in Philadelphia. Greg met LaTanya on his 15th birthday.

The high-school sweethearts recently celebrated 25 years of marriage.

The recipe belonged to Greg’s father, Greg Miller Sr. The younger Miller remembers his grandmother as a baker who made pies, cakes and other treats. His father was more selective. He made biscuits and one particular cake.

That pound cake was a fixture in the Miller household, especially during football season. Greg describes his father coming home from church on Sundays, impeccably dressed. He would take off his blazer but stay in his dress shirt, dress pants and shoes, and cook a full dinner. When the Philadelphia Eagles won, a cake would appear.

“He would make this cake on Sundays after the Eagles would win,” Greg recalled.

It showed up at holidays and family gatherings, too. Everybody knew it and everybody wanted it, but almost nobody knew how to make it.

LaTanya had been part of Greg’s family for years and understood what the cake meant to them. She kept asking her future father-in-law for the recipe, and he kept saying no.

“I was persistent,” she said. “My thinking at the time was just, no one else has the recipe. We need to be able to pass that recipe on.”

He eventually gave in, though not with a neatly written recipe card. He recited the ingredients and measurements while she hurried to write them down.

“He didn’t tell me any details,” she recalled.

The baking temperature was unclear, and so was the cooking time. The technique lived largely in his hands and memory. LaTanya scribbled what she could onto a loose-leaf sheet. Because she and Greg weren’t married yet, she titled it “Mr. Miller’s pound cake.” Then she folded the paper and put it in her recipe book.

Greg’s father kept making his cake, so for years there was little reason to think about that piece of paper. Then, in 2017, he died.

Only weeks earlier, he had made the cake for his own June 24 birthday. As the family gathered after his death, someone lamented that nobody had the recipe. LaTanya went back to her recipe book and found the sheet she had saved.

When the first Eagles game arrived after his father’s death, Greg asked LaTanya if they could make Killer Miller Pound Cake and keep the tradition going. The first attempt was okay, LaTanya said, but it wasn’t quite his.

Baking was already part of her own family history. Her mother, Rita Lane, is a baker, and LaTanya had enough experience and instinct to work through the missing instructions. After several test runs, they believed they had it by Thanksgiving. The family tasted the cake and agreed.

“This is it.”

How Killer Miller Pound Cake Became a Business

Still, nobody was thinking about a business. For years, the Millers made Killer Miller Pound Cake for holidays and family occasions. LaTanya sometimes posted photos on social media, and friends noticed. Some of the people who eventually became customers had never tasted the cake. They remembered the pictures.

After the Labor Day cookout, LaTanya went home and posted on Facebook that someone had offered to pay for her cake. People responded: Sign me up. Orders started coming, faster than the couple could keep up.

At their first pop-up in Willingboro, held outside a friend’s barbershop, they brought 125 Killer Miller minis and 80 slices of cake. They went home with 36 minis and six slices. LaTanya posted the leftovers online, and by the next morning everything was sold.

Now the couple is handling the paperwork side of the business: forming an LLC, pursuing food-safety certification, trademarking the name and eventually building a website. For now, customers mostly find Killer Miller Pound Cake through Facebook and order through a Google form.

There is one product: a sour cream pound cake, available with or without frosting.

Greg handles much of the promotion and social media, and LaTanya bakes, though the division of labor is more intertwined than that. Before they start, they pray together. He measures the ingredients. She takes over the baking. If a cake is frosted, that part belongs to Greg.

That goes back to the first cake they attempted after his father’s death, when Greg asked if he could frost it so he could be part of the process. He has frosted every cake since.

“It truly is a partnership between the two of us,” LaTanya said.

What Killer Miller Pound Cake Means to Greg and LaTanya Miller

She said the response has meant something beyond sales. Friends have rallied around them. Strangers have wanted to taste Killer Miller Pound Cake. Customers have recorded unsolicited videos of themselves reacting to their first bite.

“It gives me hope,” she said. “People just seem to be genuinely happy, not only for us, but happy when they’re eating the cake.”

For Greg, the meaning is more personal. He sees the business as a way to keep his father’s name and memory alive.

“I feel like I have that extra purpose,” he said. “I’m able to show love to two people.”

One is his wife, whose baking earns praise every time someone enjoys Killer Miller Pound Cake. The other is his father, who first baked it.

Greg wants to see how far Killer Miller Pound Cake can go, and he has one very Philadelphia destination in mind: the Eagles. Through a family connection, the team’s chaplain and his wife have already tasted it. Greg hopes that’s only the start.

He has also decided what he wants Killer Miller Pound Cake to stand for.

“A legacy of love,” he said, “one cake at a time.”

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