Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Ariel Gonzalez. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Ariel , thanks for joining us today. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?

We recently underwent a comprehensive rebranding for Karla Cuban Bakery to revitalize and differentiate ourselves in the crowded Miami Cuban Bakery market. We wanted to dial into the unique and meaningful differences of our family heritage, recipes, and brand personality to showcase our unique offering to Miami and the surrounding areas. The evolution of Karla Cuban Bakery allows us to honor our rich Cuban heritage while bringing a fresh and modern approach to our bakeries. We are excited to continue to evolve for our new customer base as well as long-time patrons and generations.

Over the past year and a half we’ve refreshed our brand identity to convey those unique differences through packaging, our look and feel, branded custom organic Cuban coffees, new equipment, streamlining our operations, as well as the opening of our newly branded Doral location. Doral is our 7th location in the Miami area.

The Doral location is our flagship store for the new brand. We just love its lush and exotic warmth with a nod to old Havana, and a crisp, modern vibe. The store features tactile fabrics and dark woods, antiqued brass details, handmade tile, intimate conversation nooks and historic silkscreened banana leaf wallpapers. We’ve also dedicated it to another recent addition, the birth of our precious daughter Bella Karla. We are really excited for everyone to visit.

Ariel , 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?

Karla Cuban Bakery went through a rebranding process approximately 2.5 years ago. Since then, we have been focusing on evolving our overall customer experience. This includes not only a new ‘look and feel’, but also product innovation, new branded interiors and more. In October of 2021 we launched a custom Karla Cuban Coffee blend of organic at-home and in-store coffee brews. In addition, we brought in new equipment and re-trained our staff on the art of making the perfect cafecito. Each cup is now ground on demand to assure the freshest, most flavorful cup. The response has been tremendous, and we are invigorated to push forward. We’re very proud of our custom organic coffees and plan to evolve into our own version of iced Cuban coffees and cold brew soon.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

The recent changes at Karla Cuban Bakery and the rebranding process took place during unprecedented times. Making big changes during a pandemic along with staff shortages, supply chain issues and rising food costs have put every food business under additional stress. Our family has evolved Karla Cuban Bakery over 3 generations and we’d like to think our strong family foundation under many circumstances has helped us grow, evolve and stay positive. We have learned to ‘think fast on our feet’, pivot when needed, and offer the best customer experience and product we can. There are always going to be challenges in the restaurant business, however, it only makes us stronger in the long run. We’ve stayed true to our family heritage and principles and hope our loyal customers support our growth. We are always eager to learn new things, expand our technology and products in order to move with a changing world. Our hope is to do this while honoring our rich culture and unique flavors to Miami and expanding areas.

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

The recent challenges with food costs for restaurants have given us the opportunity to offer lower cost alternatives to our lunch menu as well as reducing waste.

Throughout the pandemic and beyond we have stayed committed to providing the freshest bakery items in all of our stores, For example, our pastelitos are baked fresh every single day at each location. We never sell yesterday’s batch. We only offer the flakiest and most flavorful pastelito we can provide. During current restaurant industry challenges, we have remained faithful to this brand promise by pivoting to a smaller pastelito offering but only serving a fresh and flavorful pastry. We believe our customers prefer the freshness.
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Contact Info:

• Website: www.karlabakery.com
• Instagram: @karlacubanbakery
• Facebook: Karla Bakery

Image Credits
Lunabrand Design Group, Rick Gayle Photography, Marcel Boldu Photography