{"id":71,"date":"2025-12-06T17:10:34","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T17:10:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/?p=71"},"modified":"2025-12-06T17:10:34","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T17:10:34","slug":"baker-delivers-free-birthday-cakes-to-homeless-people-theyre-our-neighbors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/?p=71","title":{"rendered":"Baker Delivers Free Birthday Cakes to Homeless People: \u2018They\u2019re Our Neighbors\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Manolo Betancur, owner of Manolo\u2019s Bakery in Charlotte, North Carolina, has been giving out cakes to his homeless neighbors for more than 12 years.<\/p>\n

Manolo Betancur believes everyone deserves a birthday cake.<\/p>\n

\u201cI arrived to America 25 years ago, and I didn\u2019t speak any English, and I didn\u2019t have any money in my pocket,\u201d Betancur, owner of\u00a0Manolo\u2019s Bakery in Charlotte, North Carolina, tells Socializenews.com<\/p>\n

He left his birth country of Colombia to attend college in Tennessee. Years after going to school, he got married, moved to North Carolina and, in 2005, bought his bakery.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are the oldest immigrant Latino bakery in the Carolinas,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Through his bakery, Betancur has sold tres leches, tartaleta and cheesecakes to his customers, while simultaneously giving back to his community. For 12 years, he\u2019s been donating cakes to celebrate the birthdays of those experiencing homelessness in his city.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t call them \u2018homeless,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cThey\u2019re our neighbors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Betancur says it all started when he approached Raise You Up Ministries, a nonprofit focused on the needs of chronically homeless people in the greater Charlotte area, to ask them where they were getting cake for people\u2019s birthdays, and offered to donate from his bakery.<\/p>\n

\"Baker<\/picture>
A volunteer hands out cake to homeless folks in Charlotte, North Carolina.<\/span>Courtesy Grant Baldwin Photography<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Now, he serves vanilla sheet cakes \u2014 some with caramel, some with peaches inside \u2014 whenever a birthday comes up.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, that was the coolest idea ever, because nobody thinks about their birthdays,\u201d Betancur says.<\/p>\n

This year, Betancur and his employees delivered their 300th cake, marking a hard-fought milestone. He thinks back to one experience that makes it all worth it.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomebody from the nonprofit approached me one day and said, \u2018Manolo, are you the cake guy?\u2019\u201d he says. When he nodded, the employee told him that the last person he delivered a cake to cried and said it was the first time he had a birthday cake in his life.<\/p>\n

Betancur says, \u201cThat (was) the most important cake in this bakery.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Manolo Betancur, owner of Manolo\u2019s Bakery in Charlotte, North Carolina, has been giving out cakes to his homeless neighbors for more than 12 years. Manolo…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[21,20],"class_list":["post-71","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-birthday-cakes","tag-homeless-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73,"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions\/73"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socializenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}