From Childhood Memory to Business Vision — How Cheyenne Brown Fell in Love With Funnel Cakes
Some businesses start with a spreadsheet and a business plan. Cheyenne Brown’s started with the smell of vanilla batter drifting through an amusement park when she was a little girl. For the Compton native, funnel cakes have never just been a snack — they are tied to some of her most cherished memories and celebrations, beginning at her cousin’s tenth birthday party at Knott’s Berry Farm.
That early love never faded. In fact, it only deepened. During her college years, Brown would drive 30 minutes from Compton to an amusement park after finishing midterms — paying for parking and admission — just to get her hands on a funnel cake. What most people would consider an inconvenient craving, she recognized as something worth building around.
“I just remember seeing people walking around with this cake, and you can smell the vanilla batter in the air,” she told Black Enterprise, describing the moment she fell in love with the sweet treat.
That sensory memory became the seed of everything that followed.
Miss Compton 2014 — How a Pageant Title Sparked a Community-Driven Mission
Before Cheyenne Brown was a food entrepreneur, she was a beauty queen with a purpose. Growing up in Compton, she was deeply aware of the negative stereotypes attached to her hometown — the assumptions about gangs, violence, and illiteracy that outsiders carried and that local residents had to push back against constantly. Participating in Los Angeles beauty pageants from a young age gave her a platform to begin challenging those narratives.
After a break from pageant life during middle school, she felt a strong pull to compete in the Miss Compton competition, drawn in by the mission behind the crown.
“The mission really stuck with me,” she said. “It was about changing the negative stereotypes attached to Compton. I wanted to be a part of that.”
After winning the Miss Compton title in 2014, she carried that sense of community responsibility with her into everything she built next. For Brown, serving Compton was never a season — it was a calling. And funnel cakes, as unexpected as it might sound, became her most delicious way of doing it.
The 2016 Home Pop-Up That Started Fun-Diggity Funnel-Cakes
By her senior year of college, Cheyenne Brown was tired of driving nearly 30 miles every time she wanted a funnel cake. More importantly, she recognized that her community deserved access to something she loved so much — and that there was a real business opportunity waiting to be seized. After spending six months perfecting her recipe, she pitched the pop-up concept to her mother and held her very first event at her mom’s home in 2016.
The response exceeded her expectations, even though she went into it with nerves and self-doubt.
“[The pop-up] was amazing. I think it had a lot to do with me already having a platform and being a public figure in my community. The event started with just friends and family because I was still nervous. I had a lot of self-doubt,” she recalled.
With the encouragement of her support system, she quickly launched an Instagram account for Fun-Diggity Funnel-Cakes, and the brand began gaining real traction through word-of-mouth and strong community backing. What began as a backyard pop-up was clearly becoming something much bigger.
How a Grant Helped Brown Turn a Recipe Into a Retail-Ready Funnel Cake Mix
Five years after launching Fun-Diggity Funnel-Cakes, Brown took a significant leap forward. In 2021, with funding from a grant from Grid110, she developed Fun-Diggity Funnel-Cake Mix — a packaged product that allowed her to bring the Fun-Diggity experience directly into customers’ homes and, eventually, onto store shelves.
“I used that grant money to find a manufacturer and create a formula,” she explained. “I’m a self-entrepreneur. So, all of this was new to me, but it allowed my customers to be immersed in the process with me from day one.”
That transparency — bringing her community along for the journey rather than presenting a finished product — became a core part of the Fun-Diggity brand identity. Customers did not just buy a mix; they felt invested in the story behind it. That kind of authentic connection is something money cannot manufacture, and it has been one of Brown’s most powerful business assets.
Reality TV, Investor Pitching, and the Vegan Mix on the Horizon
Cheyenne Brown’s entrepreneurial journey took another significant turn when she appeared on the second season of the reality show 60 Day Hustle, a competition that pitted entrepreneurs against one another for a $100,000 prize. Throughout the show, contestants received business scaling advice from a network of experts, investors, mentors, and millionaires. Although Brown did not walk away with the grand prize, she left with something arguably more valuable — the skills to articulate her brand clearly and confidently to investors.
“I learned how to articulate my message because I had never pitched my brand to investors before. I learned a lot about articulating my message, how to make things clear and concise, and how to focus,” she said.
Her performance as a finalist earned her a $12,500 grant from ZenBusiness, a meaningful validation of her work and vision. Additionally, the prize money from the show is now being put toward her next big product — a vegan funnel cake mix that will expand Fun-Diggity’s reach to an even broader audience. With each step, Brown is methodically building the kind of brand that lasts.
Cheyenne Brown’s Bigger Vision — Making Fun-Diggity the Jiffy of Funnel Cakes
Looking ahead, Cheyenne Brown has a clear and ambitious target in mind. She wants Fun-Diggity Funnel-Cake Mix to become the standard name in funnel cakes — the go-to product that sits on pantry shelves across America the same way Jiffy cornbread mix does. It is a bold comparison, but for someone who drove 30 minutes just for a funnel cake and built a brand from her mother’s backyard, bold ambitions feel entirely on brand.
Compton, the community that shaped her and that she has poured herself into serving, remains central to everything she does. Brown has consistently pushed back against the limited narratives about her hometown, insisting that the talent, drive, and heart that come out of Compton deserve to be recognized.
“A lot of talent comes out of Compton. We are a driven community that may be small, but it’s mighty. I think people forget that Compton is situated in the middle of all of Los Angeles. We are truly the heart of the county,” she said.
From a little girl smelling vanilla batter at an amusement park to a founder building a nationally scalable food brand — Cheyenne Brown’s story is exactly the kind that reminds you why it always pays to take the thing you love most and build something with it.
