We were lucky to catch up with Aida Bubukina recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Aida thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Would you say you are more focused on growing revenue or cutting costs? We’d love to hear how you think about these two critical drivers

I don’t think that the verb “cut” reflects what happens during the process of growing. I would say “grow revenue, control and manage costs”. We are alive as long as we move forward, So, if we want to prosper, we have to constantly develop our business and make more and more money. It is a market law. Not to save more, but to make more. At the same time, you should not “cut” costs, but restructure them just because your business structure starts changing when you grow up (it is inevitable), so costs change too. This is the point number one. Point number two is when you work, for instance, with food, you must maintain the highest level of quality of your product, not to buy cheaper, but to buy the best.

Aida, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

We have been living in LA for more than 4 years and a half. Before coming here we had a similar business in Russia, so there were no questions about what to do. The bakery is our key. We bake cakes and sell on two farmers’ markets the food that our Russian-speaking clients are looking for just because of their nostalgia and their habits of enjoying what they liked when they were children. We started in January 2021 (during the pandemic) with some sophisticated desserts but we realized soon that people prefer to eat something different on-site instead of buying different prepackaged treats even if they are very yummy.
So we decided to make a kind of a survey to see what our customers really want and really enjoy. Then step by step we found products that could be interesting for them.
Now we sell traditional Georgian food (from the Caucasus), as well as Slavic one (Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian): khachapuri, piroshki, sirniki (cottage cheese pancakes), chebureki (kind of Tatar empanadas), etc.
We did not forget our desserts. We sell Napoleon cake, Kartoshka cake (a truffle-like chocolate sponge cake), Pavlova cake, honey cake, traditional orange/cranberry and orange/chocolate cookies etc.
At the same time, we make hot French Crepes with different savory and sweet toppings that people adore.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

The most important thing that helps to build any reputation is the quality of your product and the desire to satisfy your clients, saying mostly “yes” instead of “no”. When you understand that it may be very hard to do what your client asks for, the best answer you should find is “How to do it the best way” instead of saying “I can’t do that because…”

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

Sure! We like useful books and videos. At the same time, we prefer information that has the most powerful impact not on a specific kind of business, but mostly on self-efficiency. I will not be original here if I say that the famous “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill may serve as a kind of business Bible for any entrepreneur. We like very much videos by Brian Tracey, Joe Dispenza etc. It is quite enough to type “motivational videos” in the search window of YouTube to find thousands of very interesting interviews or stories of famous and reliable speakers. We do it every morning when preparing our breakfast and it helps “to charge our battery” and make our day.

Contact Info:

• Website: aidabakes.com
• Instagram: aida_bakes.co
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aidabakes.co
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/aidas-baking-los-angeles-3