Walton turns side hustle into a thriving business

By St. Clair Murraine

Outlook Staff Writer 

Reka Walton found herself with a bit of a conundrum after COVID-19 started to let up – go back to her job as an administrative assistant or continue with her side hustle of selling pudding.

She decided on the latter, although she felt a little out on a limb. 

“When I left my job and started doing it fulltime,” she said of the time she second-guessed her decision to make selling pudding her livelihood, “I was like, I’m really doing this. I was very scared.” 

Three years later, Walton is among the successful entrepreneurs who took a side hustle and turned it into a business following the pandemic. She calls it Pudding Junkie and on Saturday she was in the mix at The Moon where mostly entrepreneurs showed up for the Black Business Expo.

Like Walton, many of the owners are into food service. There was a pest control company and several in different areas of the service and building industries.

They got plenty of advice on how to advance their businesses. Did plenty of networking, while some even walked away with portions of cash grants that organizer Vaughn Wilson said totaled $15,000.

Walton, a first-time participant in the Expo — was recipients of one of the $100 grants. Being at the Expo was the latest of several opportunities that Walton has had to showcase her business since making the move to make Pudding Junkie her fulltime job.

These days she is in a place that “I never would have guessed in a million years,” Walton said.

From the beginning it was serendipity that played out. Her mother brought home a taste of a pudding that her co-worker brought to a potluck. The pudding became such a hit with the family that Walton’s mother asked for the recipe.

It was used to prepare dessert with family meals during occasions like Thanksgiving.

Several years passed before Walton got a call from her brother in Miami asking for the recipe to prepare pudding for a potluck on his job. The next time Walton heard from her brother he told her that he’d started a gig selling pudding. 

“My brother was selling pudding in Miami and he was telling me, I need you to do it in Tallahassee,” she said. “I was like, ‘I’m not doing that.”

Then, the pandemic hit and Walton found herself with plenty of time, while working from home in 2021. Giving her brothers suggestion a shot began to seem possible since she wasn’t making much from her passion for decorating shoes and shirts.

She posted 14 bowls of her pudding on Facebook. The response changed her life and led to the name of the business.

“When the people first started buying the pudding, they were like junkies,” Walton said. “They were just on it really heavily, calling me and texting me. It was crazy.”

She told her fiancé how she felt about the responses, mentioning junkies.

“He said, there is you name, there is your name; the pudding junkie,” she recalled. “So I just went with it.”

Social media became her best marketing tool.

“Every week I kept posting a little bit more and it took off from there.”

Pudding Junkie became so popular that the owner of G&G Restaurant allowed Walton to share space in the eatery. That lasted until she decided to make one more move. This time it was to the KitchenShare program at Frenchtown Farmers Market Heritage Hub.

She has a staff of two and business is steady. Apart from making the traditional pudding dessert, she has a flavor called the brownie blast. It has a layer of fudge brownie with whipped cream. The choices also include several variations of banana, but the favorite remains the original banana, which a mix of vanilla wafers and banana.

Walton has also used some off-the-shelf favorites like Reese’s peanut butter cookies to create a pudding.

The exposure at the Expo could bring another bump if she follows the suggestion echoed many times Saturday.

“It’s about networking,” Wilson said. “The people (supporters) that we have here, every one of these businesses, are definite. It’s not a show.”

Wilson also encouraged the owners to register their businesses with the Tallahassee Leon County Office of Economic Vitality. Keith Bowers, director of the OEV went into a little more detail.

“The Office of Economic Vitality is here as your ally to tailor programs, resources and advocacy to create an environment where every Black-owned business can flourish,” Bowers said. “Your success is integral to the overall economic health of our community. So let’s use this expo as a platform to network (and) learn.”