We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Afifee Saad. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Afifee below.

Afifee , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

For as long as I can remember, friends and family have always complimented my cooking and baking. Though I never went to school to learn the art of cooking, I learned everything from my mom and grandmother while growing up in Lebanon. Food has always been a sort of love language in our family. We love having people over for dinner parties…the more the merrier! Throughout my adult life, I honed my skills in the kitchen. I loved experimenting and trying new recipes, while also infusing the Lebanese flavors from my home country into classic recipes from all over the world. I was encouraged all my life to open a restaurant or bakery, but was always fearful of taking on such an unknown risk and was just focused on caring for my family. As my kids grew into adults, they began encouraging me to follow my passions. Eventually, my daughter and I took the plunge and started a Lebanese bakery from our home kitchen. There’s not really many options for very fresh, baked to order Lebanese pastries in our area, so we decided why not do it ourselves. The love and care that goes into making our desserts is something you won’t find anywhere else. Each menu item not only tastes good, but looks good. Many of our sweets are like little works of art. At farmers markets, folks are always coming up to us and complimenting the display on how beautiful everything looks on the table. We hope to keep bringing high-quality baking filled with love and passion to those in our area.

Afifee , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I answered this a little in the previous section. We are a bake-to-order bakery operating from our home kitchen. Customers can contact us to place an order from our menu whether they have an event or party coming up or just a personal order. We’ll provide whatever sweets they need and bake it to order on the day they request. Customers usually pickup from our home in either Livonia or Canton, or we also offer delivery within a certain radius. We have also catered dessert tables for large events and parties when customers are looking for a unique display with fresh pastries and unique desserts. We bake everything ourselves, from scratch, with the highest quality ingredients and great care, as if we were baking for our own family. We make regular appearances at farmers markets locally as well.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Local farmers markets have been the way to get our name and brand out there to new customers. When we go to markets, we bring a wide variety of our baked goods and we sample some of our Lebanese pastries. This has gotten folks to try new desserts they’ve never had before and subsequently fall in love with them. We’ve gotten many new customers that have become regulars as they have had the opportunity to buy from a wide variety of items at the market. We love watching people try new foods and start falling in love with Lebanese sweets, which tend to be lighter in their sugar content but bold in flavor.

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

We try to keep in touch by posting regularly on social media. Sometimes that becomes challenging during busy seasons in our lives as both my daughter and I have other jobs that we work while we bake part-time. Some months are better than others with posting on our social media and keeping in touch with our customers.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.facebook.com/cookingteta
• Instagram: @thecookingteta
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cookingteta

Image Credits
all photos were taken by us