Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Victoria Jones. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Victoria, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s jump right into the heart of things. Outsiders often think businesses or industries have much larger profit margins than they actually do – the reason is that outsiders are often unaware of the biggest challenges to profitability in various industries – what’s the biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?
This is such a great question and is a topic of much discussion within the field! In my opinion, the biggest challenge to profitability within the cottage home bakery business is the cookie artists themselves. Being profitable as a cottage home baker making custom decorated cookies is a huge challenge. The challenge comes from an array of areas. The ever increasing cost of ingredients, the amount of time to decorate the cookies for an order (it typically takes me 6-8 hours to decorate a dozen cookies for an order) as well as the time to design an order, make and bake dough, mix and color icing and the costs for all the products that goes into creating beautiful cookies adds up quickly. Cookie artists want to keep their product affordable, while at the same time earning a profit. In general, cookie artists don’t charge enough overall for their cookies because they are afraid of losing orders. As result, they will take on more orders, often times at the expense of sleep and family time, in order to turn a profit rather than taking fewer orders at more cost to the customer. This quickly leads to burn out on the cookier’s side and disappointment on the customer’s side because the art form gets sloppy or corners are cut in the quality of ingredients, etc.
Custom cookies are just that. They are custom made pieces of edible art that are a labor of love. They are designed specific for each client and may not necessarily fit within the budget for every potential client, and that is okay. They are a niche product and deserve to be recognized as that. If more cookiers treated their art form as such, and charged accordingly, then there would be more profitability.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Hello! My name is Victoria Jones and I am the one woman show behind Little Penelope’s Cookie Boutique. Prior to getting bit by the cookie decorating bug, I was a registered nurse for 21 years. After having my daughter, Penelope, I decided to retire from nursing to stay home and raise her. As her first birthday was approaching, I really wanted to get some custom cookies to celebrate the special occasion. Everyone that I reached out to was unavailable. I had all but given up on having cookies for her birthday when, at the last minute, I found someone who could make them. As I was eating one, the all too familiar experience of eating a hard, dry, and flavorless beautiful cookie came to fruition. I was super disappointed. Then and there, I decided that I was going to learn how to make decorated sugar cookies that were as delicious as they were beautiful so I would never have to go through that experience again. A month later, I took a beginner cookie decorating class and fell in love. Easter rolled around, and I made cookies to practice my new skills. I sent my husband to work with some of the cookies and gave the rest to my neighbors. Before I knew it, I was getting order requests for upcoming May and June graduations from those who had tasted my practice cookies. At first, I was reluctant and declined the orders. A few more requests came in, and I began to think that maybe I actually had something that was worthwhile. I decided to go for it and launched Little Penelope’s Cookie Boutique in ode to the precious baby who was the reason for the newfound cookie craze that I fell absolutely in love with! I have now been creating custom cookies for my clients’ special occasions for three years. I pride myself on creating one of a kind artisan decorated sugar cookies that taste just as good as they look. Each custom order I accept is tailored specifically for the event and client they are being made for.
This past year I expanded my cookie business by offering in-person and online cookie decorating classes for beginners and experienced cookiers alike! I have a genuine love of teaching others, so this has been an extremely exciting time for me in my cookie business journey. Teaching others how to create little pieces of cookie art that they never dreamed they could do brings me so much joy! My current class offerings can be found on my website and are update as new ones become available!
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
Social media is incredibly important for the success of small businesses these days. Prior to operating my cookie business, I had used facebook and Instagram sparingly and didn’t know how to use it for business at all. Once I opened Little Penelope’s Cookie Boutique up for business, I began scouring the internet for advice on how to properly market myself on Instagram. I took an online Instagram challenge course which got the ball rolling for my Instagram account. I also added a business account to my personal FB account and linked it to my business IG account to build my presence there. I took the advice I learned from the online course I took and got my account on the right track for growth. I also used advice I got from various IG accounts on growing your IG account and made posting on IG a daily part of my business routine. Now, my IG account has grown to 150K followers and my FB account has grown to 8,300 followers.
My best advice to anyone trying to grow on IG is to be consistent. Be consistent in posting and interacting with those you follow, those who follow you, and those who interact with you on your posts who you don’t follow back. Be consistent in the time of day you post, and using hashtags that are specific to your niche and what you are posting. Consistency is key when it comes to success on any social media platform!
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
My business got started purely by word of mouth. In the first few months of my business, all of my orders came from those who had tasted one of the practice cookies I made when I was just learning how to use royal icing and was experimenting with my cookie recipe. These were friends, neighbors, and my husband’s co-workers. From these first few orders, new orders came from those who had eaten my cookies at the events they had attended, and so on. About 4 months into starting my business, I rented a booth and sold cookies at an annual civic event in my city to promote my business. This is what got my business off the ground. At this same time, my FB and IG business following was also growing. Most of my orders were coming from local FB groups in the early days. Knowing this, I used local FB groups to post sales, and offerings and was very successful with this . Now, most of my business comes from repeat clients, and IG. In the big picture of it all, each step along the way has been important in growing my clientele!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.littlepenelopescookieboutique.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/littlepenelopescookieboutique/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Littlepenelopescookieboutique/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFXh61pnmqvcLSYe0q0Ly1g
Image Credits
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