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

Alisa, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Looking back, do you think you started your business at the right time? Do you wish you had started sooner or later

Owning a bakery had been the “five year plan” for almost 15 years, always being put off because we weren’t independently wealthy and had to still pay bills. I kept hearing that new businesses didn’t make any money for the first few years, so I would need to put money aside. That money, however, always found a new home. Getting caught up on our credit card payments, vacations, daycare… I always found a funnel for my bakery funds, and the pot never grew. In the spring of 2020 I got laid off and went on unemployment that was, because of some Covid funds, more than what I was making at my old job. And because I wasn’t going anywhere and doing anything, that little bakery fund grew. I applied for hundreds of jobs, but my degree was in sport management, and my experience was in event ticketing. And no one was going to sports and no one was buying tickets, so I didn’t get a single call back. I held on to hope every time I applied for a job I thought I was perfectly qualified for, but in the back of my mind wondered if this could be my opportunity. I had a newborn, my son was born mid April 2020, so my stress level was high and I needed an outlet. Making macarons was something I enjoyed when I needed a respite from real life. They were finnicky, prone to failure, moody, and I wanted to master them so bad. So I started making them by the dozens. I was posting photos on an old failed bakery business page on instagram and I started to get some likes. I decided to rebrand my old bakery business into Sift n Sprinkle and flex some old social media muscles, learning to edit my photos in lightroom and creating my own presets. Eventually a friend ask how much I would charge for a dozen, and she and I worked out a price.
There was no risk at the time, pulling in a decent salary on unemployment during a worldwide pandemic. So I put a google doc together and put them on sale. My first macaron flash sale sold 40 dozen, and I stayed up almost all night for a few nights getting them done. I had many failed batches (macarons know when you’re stressed) but it was the start of Sift n Sprinkle official.
That was the best possible time to start the business, and I’m eternally grateful my procrastination paid off.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My great grandma had an in home bakery where she set things out on the porch and people would leave money in a jar. Her daughter, my grandma, was a homemaker, but she was also an avid baker and competed in the Iowa State Fair. She had so many ribbons her basement was basically wallpapered in them. She would pack her practices in a fridge in her garage for the people in the neighborhood to grab. We always went on Sundays for the most delicious breakfasts before church. Pecan rolls, apple crisp, pies galore. Pies are breakfast, right? We discovered she had dementia when I was in College, and it devastated me. She eventually passed away, and her recipes, however detailed she wrote them down, seemingly passed with her. No one could quite recreate them like Grandma could.
When I moved back to Iowa after a brief tour of Chicago and New Orleans after college, I decided to enter a few contests in the Iowa State Fair to honor my Grandma. I entered five items and took home three blue ribbons. I was totally hooked. I spent the next almost ten years perfecting my recipes, entering contests, and winning big prizes. I almost fully funded my honeymoon with prize money the year of our wedding.
The State Fair was my identity for many years, people came out of the woodwork to tell me they went to check out my winning entries on display at the fair, and told me they looked forward to my State Fair social media content all year long.
So that made it really hard to decide to give that up nearly all of the contests are for amateurs) and start a full time business.
When I finally did decide to make the jump, I realized that I had some amazing recipes from my years at the fair I could use in my business. A multiple blue ribbon winning s’mores cake, a churro macaron filled with a homemade dulce de leche… Fruity Pebbles cookies. And the task of making all of my entries aesthetically pleasing and perfectly shaped meant that my bakery would put out consistent and professional looking products.
I now sell those items and more. I specialize in French macarons, dessert charcuterie tray, and custom cakes. I’ve even made cakes for celebrity clients like Diesel Dave of the Discovery Channel show Diesel Brothers, and THE Sir Elton John.
My desserts are centerpieces that look as good as they taste. I’m the go-to for realtors that want to wow at open houses, tea parties at a local castle, photo shoots, bridal showers, and any special celebration.
I am fully invested in the happiness of my customers. I love to get to know them and surprise them with a dessert that makes their event memorable. I love being that thing friends talk about for months after the party. My desserts are beautiful, but my absolute favorite comment is, “I thought I didn’t like (macarons, frosting, cake, etc) but I LOVE yours.
I have the State Fair to thank for my commitment to both pleasing the eye and the palette.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I heard once that the average millionaire has seven streams of income. And while I don’t pretend to be a millionaire, I do think there’s something important I can take away from that fact as a business owner. I have made it a priority to diversify the types of income I have within my business, and I’m working to build even more. When I first started, I was selling 30-40 dozen macarons in one flash sale, and my custom orders were coming from those customers who were happy with their macarons and then wanted to buy cakes from me. My holiday flash sales were selling out in a day. Flash forward to this Easter when I had three sales. But that same week was one of my best weeks of the year because I had a 1500 cookie order from a corporate order. As I built my business, I knew things would eb and flow, some weeks I don’t sell any macarons at all, and some weeks, like last week, I am making over 700.
I have consistent wholesale orders to fill around town, I do some pop ups here and there, I started a YouTube channel, I’m working on e-cookbooks and courses. I teach classes at a local kitchen supply store twice a month. If any one of those channels fails for a season, I still have the other channels to keep my business afloat.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

When I was in college I worked at a TV station as an intern in the sports department. There was a big story where some of the college football players in the state had been arrested for stealing credit cards. I was nosey, and young, so I found their MySpace page (Now you know how old I am) and I found a bunch of photos of cash and liquor bottles with them posing proudly. I saved all of the photos and showed them to my boss and his eyes about popped out of his head. He was like, where did you find these? And I said, MySpace! And he said, whose space?? We were the first to run the photos, and I was pretty proud of my detective work. Flash forward to my move back to Iowa, my old boss called and said, hey I know you know social media and internet stuff… Do you want to come and do our social media? We think we need to get the channel on Facebook (Ya think?). So I came back to Iowa and worked at the TV station for two years getting their social media up to speed, switching their reporters over to business pages so they could have more followers, and running their website.
I continued to have an interest in social media, having come in a the ground level of social growth on the internet, and was on a committee within the marketing department in my next job in the ticket office of an event center.
When I started my social media pages for Sift n Sprinkle, I had a vision of a very clean grid with bright colors, crisp lines, and consistent backgrounds. That paired with consistent posting (everyday between 8 and 9) I was able to teach the algorithm on Instagram what to expect rom me, and was able to grow my business. I also got boosts from being on TV, with my connections to the TV station I had some stories written about me, and was able to be a regular on their morning talk show, Hello Iowa.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.siftnsprinkle.com
• Instagram: @siftnsprinkle
• Facebook: siftnsprinkle
• Youtube: @siftnsprinkle
• Other: Tik Tok: Siftnsprinkle