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

Hi Allye & Kaylee, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

Study, study, study; practice, practice, practice!! From the study perspective- many hours were spent watching baking competition shows and videos. Many more hours researching how to execute certain techniques and try different designs. With all of the research and visual aides, the ultimate path to growth was diving in and trying. There was a LOT of trial and error on the road to feeling confident enough to put ourselves out there and actually sell product (MANY failed attempts… and every once in a while a bad baking day can bring that back :)).

Speeding up the process would really have involved doing much more hands on baking, and possibly taking some specific classes directly. All of our baking was self taught/directed.

Honestly, I think the biggest skill to success is to just go for it! It really is a craft that takes a lot of trial and error… and that persistence is key.

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.

Allye & Kaylee met through their kids’ daycare back in 2018. What started as kid play dates, turned into friendship and sharing a love for baking! Once COVID lockdown started in March of 2020, we both really honed in on experimenting and sharing those with each other. On December 31, 2020, we baked and decorated our first cake as a team and the idea of A&K Confections became a reality. In January 2021, we made it official and both became registered cottage food producers in the state of Minnesota. Our marketing platform is mainly social media and referrals, but Kaylee is the farmers market queen, and is always on top of ensuring we have the opportunity to get our names out there in the community when we can! We started out by offering custom cakes and cupcakes, and over the past 3 years have continued adding more goodies to the list of our specialties! Things like cake pops, French macarons, and cakes/cupcakes that truly have gone beyond our wildest dreams.

While there are many things we love about the A&K brand, one of the things we are most proud of is the personal experience with our customers. We aren’t a big chain that is pumping out standard cakes or desserts… we legitimately customize every single order and bake/decorate ourselves. This is also a ‘side gig’ to both Kaylee and Allye’s full time jobs (no relation to baking). We truly use this as a creative outlet and an avenue to allow customers to bring their visions to life, for special moments in their lives. We also enjoy giving back to the community where we can– we are both ‘Sugar Angels’ for Icing Smiles, Inc., which is a non-profit organization that provides custom treats to families impacted by the critical illness of a child. With this we are able to donate our time and craft for others to enjoy.

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

Through our practice, both of us were very good about taking pictures of completed desserts. When creating our social media pages for the first time, it was mainly providing photos that we had taken, and then continuing to post newly created desserts on our pages. These are some of the key things that I think helped us get a decent following right away: – We were very active in asking our friends and family to like/share our pages
– We posted a lot, to share new creations
– We held give aways, that involved the liking our page/sharing our post to help get our names out there more
– When we would get clients, after providing their orders we were diligent about asking them to provide reviews so we could grow our ratings

After a while, we began to get more creative in our posts, and started making videos of the decorating/baking processes. This has perhaps been one of the most fun parts of it all… to show behind the scenes work on how these things come to life :)

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Sharing excitement with our customers. It’s one thing to love something that you’ve created, but for your excitement to become joy in someone else, is truly special.     

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @AKCONFECTIONS
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/akconfections