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

Alright, Andrionna thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Owning a business isn’t always glamorous and so most business owners we’ve connected with have shared that on tough days they sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have just had a regular job instead of all the responsibility of running a business. Have you ever felt that way?

I definitely think that being a business owner has its’ positive and negative points. I was just talking with a friend today about how I sometimes long for the days when I would go to a job, clock in, do my work, clock out and go home. I could leave all my thoughts of work behind and not have to participate in its’ functions until I returned. But when you own your own business, there is really no leaving it. Especially with a business like mine, a boutique artisanal bread bakery, I am a one woman show. So not only do I do all the actual baking and decorating of products, I also do everything else; recipe development, taking orders, managing the schedule, ordering ingredients, managing all messages on social media, phone calls, emails and texts, prep work, deliveries, packaging, promotions, label design and production, managing paperwork for taxes and all relevant permits and licensing required to operate, social media engagement management, sales, equipment maintenance, and maintaining relationships with patrons.
There is an immense sense of accomplishment when I juggle all of these things well, but it can be overwhelming and all consuming at times. In exchange for all the hassle you get the creative personal freedom you are not privy to otherwise when working for someone else.

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.

I began an interest in food very early on in life. My mother is an excellent cook, and I was fortunate to have a grandmother whose profession was to teach others how to decorate cakes. When I was younger, she would give me cake decorating lessons in her home as I was a child that enjoyed any kind of artistic pursuit. As I got older and went off to college I had intended to be a psychologist or sociologist, more or less leaving myself open to the idea of understanding human nature and why we do the things we do. I very unexpectedly found myself pregnant my first year of college, age 18. I knew almost immediately that I was going to be a single parent, but I wanted to stay in school for as long as I could. I stayed the course, but I realized that I would not be able to afford to stay in school throughout a PhD program that would be required for a psychology degree. During this time, I was having very intense cravings for food and enjoying it in a way that I had never experienced before. One day while in class, I had thought to myself “ all I want to do is make stuff with sugar all day!”, and so at the end of the day, I went to student services at my university and looked into transferring into a culinary program.
And that’s exactly what I did. I was very fortunate to find a culinary program about an hour from my hometown just outside Kansas City Missouri. I moved back home, transferred my credits to a local s
community college to finish out my prerequisite classes while I applied to go to a private culinary arts college. I was accepted into the program and after giving birth to my son in July, I enrolled and started classes in the fall semester.
While in the culinary program, I began to work in restaurants as a line cook, trying to learn both culinary skills as well as pastry skills. I found a deep love for bread and pastry this way. I worked in many different kinds of bakeries- doing cakes, cupcakes, cookies, basically standard American style sweets. But what I really wanted to do was make bread. However, bread baking jobs are few and far between in the Midwest where I’m from. After graduating from my culinary college, I was fortunate enough to earn a job as a pastry chef at a restaurant called “Story.” in Prairie Village, Kansas. It is an American fine dining restaurant ran by James Beard nominated Chef Carl Thorne-Thompson. I absolutely loved my job there, and look back on it with nostalgia and fondness. I was able to immerse myself in bread work and pastry work that I found incredibly fulfilling. I only left that job upon meeting my now husband. When we met things clicked very quickly. He asked me to move over 300 miles away to central Arkansas where he was a university professor. I said yes, but only after I had trained my replacement for Story. So we got married but I did not leave my job and move down with him until several months afterwards.
Once settled in the small Arkansas River Valley town of Russellville, I quickly realized that there was no job nearby where I would be doing work at the caliber I was doing before. Not only that, but from the time I realize that I was pregnant with my son, it had been 100 miles an hour for five years. I stayed in college full-time and worked full-time. It was a full-time single mom until I met my husband. He offered me the opportunity to stay home without working if I so desired. That sounded pretty nice for a few months before I realized that I’m just not the kind of person who doesn’t work professionally in some capacity. After years of living under pressure and finding peace only in a few hours between the dayshift and the night shift, I had been molded into a high intensity, survival mode adaptive person and didn’t know how to live outside of that.
I decided just to start working small coffee shop and worked on bread recipes at home, and thought maybe I would do a cute little set up at a farmers market just to keep my bread skills up and give me something to do. Little did I know I was fulfilling a niche in this town that hadn’t been met yet. From my first farmers market to where I am today, things grew exponentially, it would be allowed to grow out of control if I didn’t set firm boundaries .
I decided to name my little industry “Kuroki Bakery: Artisanal Breads & Pastries”, and that’s exactly what I make. I specialize in artisanal style breads of many different kinds, as well as European style pastries, custom cake, decorating, as well as dabbling in the confectionary world of Japanese sweets due to my husband’s influence as a Japanese immigrant.
I’m particularly proud to bring items to this part of the state that had not been seen before or even heard of before such as; canele de Bordeaux, taiyaki, Bouchon, financier, pain de Compagne, Japanese milk bread, melon pan, etc etc.
I am particularly proud that everything I make is made from scratch by my hands and made to order! I do my best to fill every order that is requested of me, on menu, off menu, specialty baked goods for other immigrants missing a taste of home; I try to fulfill every need I can.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I started out very small. I was working at a small coffee shop just to pass the time, while pregnant with my second child. The coffee shop was one of those little hole-in-the-wall type places that had a strong, modest group of patrons that were loyal to them. I began making little simple things like scones and muffins to sell at the coffee shop because I was developing recipes at home.
Working as a professional pastry chef you don’t ever see your clientele. You’re in the kitchen working, a faceless producer of beautiful things. But at this coffee shop, I was speaking to people one on one and learning what they would be interested in trying and buying there. When I decided to do the farmers market, it was still a lot of that face time that I had never experienced before. I found that I naturally connect with people and enjoyed learning their preferences, and finding joy in having them try something they had never heard of before in discovering that they love it. Really speaking with these people, not only as customers but as friends, really helped to build my reputation within the community. Then on top of that, providing them with breads and pastries they had never tried before at a quality that hadn’t been seen in this area since great grandmothers had passed.

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

The very best source of new clientele for me definitely comes from word-of-mouth. I do not advertise. Ever. I stay incredibly busy with my business. I participate in local events where I am very lucky to receive the positive attention of the people who live here. I often hear people say “wow! I’ve never heard of you before until a friend had your pastries at a wedding!” Or “ we were walking around the event and were told to come and try your shop!”.
When you do your best to connect with the people who patronize your business, and provide them with top quality and care, not only with the products that you make, but with the interactions you have with them, return customers, and new clientele are never hard to come by.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kurokibakery/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/kurokibakery/

Image Credits

Alex Threlkeld (the photos of my booth) all other photos were taken by myself