We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Annie Dickson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Annie below.
Annie, appreciate you joining us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea
When my husband, Jason, and I had our son, Odin, I had the privilege of being a stay at home mom for almost 6 years. I was already quite the foodie, but I took the opportunity to dive headfirst into what I liked to call “Susie Homemaker” mode. I had homemade cookies and cakes available at all times, I made bread, hot breakfasts, packed lunches & had dinner on the table every night. If something didn’t turn out the way I wanted, I would remake it over and over again until I deemed it worthy. I always shared my trial & errors on social media, and eventually had so many requests to publish my works I decided to create an Instagram profile dedicated to my cooking & baking, what is now Bite This started as MommaBat Bakes.
I wanted to create a space that was casual, but informational. I found that even the things I thought absolutely everybody knew, were techniques and tips that many people found helpful. My style of cooking is extremely loose. Meaning I try to encourage people to measure spices and herbs with their eyes and hearts, feel doughs for doneness, and smell the love in their dishes. Just like my grandmothers taught me to do. Soon, I had messages pouring in from complete strangers thanking me for helping them feel more comfortable in the kitchen, and that was extremely rewarding for me, so I kept sharing the little things.
In the summer of 2020, we got word that my husband was going to be deployed for a year. If you’re familiar at all with military life or even long distance relationships, you know that staying busy is absolutely crucial to making that time go faster. So I decided to start selling all those treats I’d worked tirelessly to perfect. Word spread pretty quickly, and soon I was getting orders for all kinds of birthday cakes, cookies and charcuterie boards for my friends and family. I quickly outgrew my home kitchen, and by the time my husband got home was looking for spaces to potentially build out my own brick & mortar bakery.
I was doing my best to develop a business plan, crunch the numbers and be smart about the jump I was about to take, but after doing some research realized that there were a few too many local businesses that did something similar to what I wanted to do. I needed something else to set me apart, so I set out to develop a few grab and go breakfast items I could offer to make my Charcuterie/Cake business more of an every day destination versus a place you went for special occasions.
Years ago, I used to get these things at Starbucks called Bantam Bagel Bites, they were these tiny little bagels with a teaspoon or so of cream cheese in the center that you’d have to get 3 or 4 of to make a meal. I wondered if I could take this concept, a stuffed bagel, and make it better, put my spin on things. I’m pretty well known for taking the ordinary and turning it into the strange and unusual. So I blew it up, and packed it with all sorts of wonderful flavors, and thus the Bagel Bomb was born. Almost immediately, I started gaining the attention of the local foodies. I scrambled to try and look like I knew what I was doing, setting up a preorder form for weekly pickups with rotating menus. I thought that I had outgrown my kitchen before, but this was absolute chaos, like a literal bomb had gone off. I was running to Wasserstrom every other day to find bigger containers and baking racks. I was price checking GFS, Costco, and Restaurant Depot for the best deals on cream cheese. I couldn’t bake enough, fast enough to keep up with my demand. I don’t know what the actual definition is, but it felt like I had gone viral.
A few weeks into the madness I got a message from Michelle at Clintonville Farmers Market inviting me to be a vendor for the 2022 Market Season. I can’t remember her exact words, but she basically said Bagel Bombs would do very well at the market, and she could send me an application to be approved on the spot, assuming I worked out of a commercial grade kitchen because cream cheese, obviously, is not a shelf stable cottage bakery approved ingredient. I was already on the hunt for a space, I think at the time I had a few months to move into a kitchen before the market started, and although I had no idea how I was going to do it, I assured her that I would.
Thankfully by this time I had made several friends within the baking community that were a plethora of knowledge for me and helped to guide me in the right direction. Kitchen spaces are extremely hard to find, and can get super pricey. I pretty much had run out of options, and had taken all the steps necessary to move into a shared commissary space that didn’t feel quit right, almost had my name on the dotted line when I met Samantha Strange, you may know her as The Cheesecake Girl. Sam had found me through Instagram and ordered Bagel Bombs on Easter weekend for her staff, when I dropped off her order we started chatting and she told me she had good family friends that owned a restaurant that were looking for someone to rent their kitchen space. Fast forward a few weeks, and I found myself working on the same stainless steel bench that Sam started her business on several years before at Sunny Street Cafe.
With an approved commercial grade kitchen space to work out of, I quickly started working through my list of to do’s. I had a Business License, hired an accountant, opened business bank accounts, found an attorney, and had my set up approved and inspected by the Health Department. In what felt like rapid speed, I was ready for market. Michelle was right, Bagel Bombs did very well, and within a few weeks I had a line of people at my booth waiting to get their hands on the flavor of the week for not only the Bombs, but for my Fat Boi Cookies, Not F*cking Box Brownies, and Pub Grub as well.
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
Its pretty obvious just from walking past my booth at market or a quick glance at my social media accounts that I’m not your run of the mill market vendor. Everything is black, there’s a skeleton strapped to my tent no matter the month that all my regulars know affectionately as Mr. Bones, and the sign behind me says Bite This, Quizzically Creative & Carefully Curated. If you haven’t met me personally, I’d say just picture the Tim Burton of baked goods and you’d have a pretty good idea of what you’re getting in to.
But it’s not just the aesthetics that, I think, make me stand out, I have a habit of taking your every day nostalgic treats and taking them to the next level. Bagel Bombs are a class of their own, but I’ve developed what my friends call “cult followings” for my Not F*cking Box Brownie, and Pub Grub. My clients know that whatever new flavor or menu item I create will be executed with the upmost care and precision.
Absolutely everything about my brand reflects who I am, and I’m really proud of that. I like pushing the limits, and I don’t spend a single second worrying about what other people think. I never plan to be or do less to make people like me and I think people really appreciate that. What you see is what you get.
I spent a lot of my young adult life trying to “fit in” with the people around me. But fitting in for me was like trying to fit a square block in a round hole. From a very early age I was drawn to the occult. While my peers were out partying and going to football games I was trying to figure out how I could convince my mom to buy me a Ouija Board. As I’m sure everyone does, I went through ebbs and flows growing in to myself. Once I got out of my hometown and got to see more of the world I realized not everyone was as carbon copy and cookie cutter as the people where I grew up, so I settled into my own skin. Having a husband in the military meant I got to live a lot of places, experience new things, and I made good friends in every spot along the way who liked me, just for me.
When we landed in Ohio my husband was deployed to Kuwait. So I was left with a house to paint and a lot of time to work on me. I dove head first into food. I’d pick something I wanted to be good at and I made it over and over and over again until it was great. Then I would pick something else to perfect. My friends & family will confirm a meal at my house isn’t meatloaf, a hot dog or a hamburger. It’s a sous vide filet mignon with mashed potatoes and micro greens. Its chilean sea bass and risotto garnished with edible flowers, or wood fired pizza. I don’t like wasting my time on anything boring or mediocre, so if I’m going to do it its going to be done well. I get told often that I do too much, but I think it’s my attention to detail both with how I bake and the aesthetics of my brand that makes me stand out.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
I think the best way to start building a presence on social media is to be authentic and have a product that you are passionate about. My following started growing pretty steadily after I launched Bagel Bombs just from people sharing my products for me. I think that people could see how passionate I am about my trade and they wanted to follow along on this journey with me. When I get excited, my clients & followers get excited with me. We celebrate together, and I think that’s really cool. Many of them have watched me grow from the very beginning, back when I was making layer cakes out of my kitchen.
Don’t Focus on the Number
It may be an unpopular opinion, but I think it’s important to focus on quality over quantity. I’d much rather have 10 people follow me that truly love my product and actually support my brand than 1,000 followers who aren’t interested in what I do. At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter who you engaged with on Instagram, my business isn’t going to fail because I only got 20 likes on a reel, but it will fail if what I’m baking and selling doesn’t match the hype I’m creating for it on the internet.
Keep your personal life separate from your business.
Just by clicking through a few posts on my feed you know what you need to about my brand. Someone i’ve never met can look at my feed and quickly be able to tell if they’re going to be interested in what I have to offer. I try my best to keep things professional and geared mostly towards my business, while sprinkling in a bit about my personal life & family. I want my clients to know me, but they don’t need to know if my kid is sick, or if I’m having a bad day. I don’t necessarily need to share every last detail of my personal life. This is a business, after all. And at the end of the day, I need to make money to keep going. So my personal life is reserved for close friends and family.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
Consistency.
People might be drawn to my brand for any reason, but I think what keeps people coming back is consistency. No matter what my menu changes to, my clients know that its going to be executed well, because I’m extremely passionate about my craft. They know that their favorites are going to be available for them freshly baked, and taste the same as they did the last time they visited my booth. It doesn’t mean I’m perfect, that’s far from the truth, believe me I make plenty of mistakes. But as a personal rule, I don’t put anything on my table that I wouldn’t eat. So if a batch doesn’t come out up to my standards, it simply gets donated to my dedicated circle of garbage disposals who absolutely do not care if its not “up to code”, and I try again.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.bitethisbyannie.com
- Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/bitethisbyannie
Image Credits
Tyler Jamison Mills Chanel Rose Mills