One common type of student businesses are baking businesses, which are known to sell food such as cakes, cookies, brownies, and more baked goods. Recently, a couple students decided to start producing their baked goods commercially, operating under the names of Michelle’s Sweet Bites and Fancy Sweet.
Michelle’s Sweet Bites, run by sophomore Allison Ovando, sells miniature tres leches cakes, offering various flavors for customers to choose from like Oreo, red velvet, and Churro Crunch. She began her business after baking a batch of her tres leches cakes for her color guard team who gave her
positive feedback.
“I knew that I should start selling when I made a batch of my cakes for my marching band color guard group and they all liked it very much and gave me ideas of selling them,” Ovando said.
Ovando originally learned to make her cakes for family events which allowed her to make improvements to her recipe. Over time, she was able to perfect the look and taste of her cakes as she gained a lot of experience and feedback from her family. Now, Ovando sells her tres leches cakes to her community, offering each cake for $4.
“I decided on this price because I know a lot of people won’t want to pay a larger price without trying it first,” Ovando said. “And when customers give me feedback and get their friends to buy from me, it lets me know that I can start increasing the price but still make it fair for other people to buy.”
When Ovando first started selling her cakes, she quickly found success with orders coming in twice a week, immediately shifting her focus solely on her business. This, however, was at the cost of her academic performance, which began to slip due to the change in focus.
“I realized that my grades were changing from my standards so I took a break from my business to focus on school and get my grades up,” Ovando said.
With this, Ovando learned the importance of balancing her business with school as well as the value of time management, social skills, and marketing skills.
Sophomore Nanci Kassa, the owner of Fancy Sweet, found herself learning similar skills through the process of maintaining her business, also recognizing the value of making a consistent effort for each order. Like Michelle’s Sweet Bites, Fancy Sweet also sells cakes, offering several different flavors including vanilla birthday cake, cookies and cream Oreo, red velvet, and strawberry. Every cake is priced at $5, regardless of the flavor.
“I decided on $5 for every cake because it all takes the same amount of time to make [each one], and I don’t want to overprice it because it won’t be worth it,” Kassa said.
Kassa founded Fancy Sweet this year prior to winter break, learning to make her cakes by testing various cake recipes and determining which one was the best. Of all the business management skills she learned, choosing a good price based on the ingredients used as well as customer satisfaction proved to be quite a challenge.
“I learned that setting prices can be a little confusing because sometimes if you put too low, you’re gonna be spending more on ingredients than what you’re earning,” Kassa said. “So you really have to do the math to make sure.”
After navigating through the initial challenges of starting a business, both Ovando and Kassa were able to find stability in their business management. Currently, they are continuing to work towards growing their businesses, exploring new ways to improve the experience for both themselves and
their customers.
