We recently connected with Cliff Lyons and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Cliff thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry? Any stories or anecdotes that illustrate why this matters?

One of my biggest beliefs about my industry is around image. The culinary industry is in fact one of the most lucrative industries in the world especially when it comes to wealth building, it’s also the most culturally diverse. Unfortunately the benefits from the wealth generated isn’t shared ethically and with inclusivity in mind. I’ve been working professionally in the culinary industry for over 14 years and I have experienced these inequalities so much that it became a normality. It’s so normal that there’s a couple books written by great talented chefs about these unjust issues, one by Michael Twitty titled The Cooking Gene and another by Kwame Onwuachi titled Notes From A Young Black Chef that helps to bring awareness to this issue.

Cliff, 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?

I was raised in the inner city Detroit Michigan in the 80s me being the oldest of four children and because of parents that worked outside the home, I was sometimes gifted with the responsibility of preparing meals for my siblings. That’s when I realized I had a talent for the art of cooking. From these early experiences came my desire to attend culinary school at Johnson and Wales. After completing my degree I helped facilitate operations of many large and small scale kitchens in the Denver Metro Area. Later I started a 501c3 non-profit called The Spoon with a mission to teach an alternative to eating,cooking, and taking more of an adventurous approach to food with a focus on young people that might not necessarily have economic access to programs like this. The Spoon served the Denver metro community for about three years before It had to be dissolved due to funding difficulties. Ready to try something different, I took a job with a school district in the student nutrition services department managing and facilitating the operation of their central bakery. 5 days a week. I worked preparing fresh baked breads from sliced wheat breads for toast and sandwiches to cinnamon rolls. We served 70 schools housing 54,000 students everyday. After many years of dedicated work servicing the young people of the school district, I came to realize that there are major injustices when it comes to BIPOC employees like myself when receiving equal treatment and fair wages. After investing almost 7 years into the central bakery, I reluctantly realized my next move needed to be me moving on for the sake of my career and mental health. With my next move, I felt entrepreneurship was the answer to truly show my talent as well as receive the credit for using my talent. At the time I felt it was a way of shielding myself from some of the unavoidable systemic obstacles working as a traditional employee in my industry. Bully Boy Baking all started with cinnamon rolls. Before I took on the position of Executive Baker in the central bakery I became obsessed with making the perfect cinnamon roll. Being a fan of the well known Cinnabon brand I wanted to create my own cinnamon roll recipe that produced a product that is delicious, has a nice texture and is made with clean ingredients. After years of testing aka making TONS of cinnamon rolls I developed Bully Mix. Bully Mix is a yeast raised sweet bread mix that requires the baker to add only 4 ingredients: water, butter, beer, and egg. The combination between those 4 ingredients and our Bully Mix produces a rich bread dough that is not only great for making cinnamon rolls but produces the most delicious dinner rolls you probably ever tasted. In 2019 I started baking cinnamon rolls and delivering them fresh to my customers on the weekends. In a short time I had so many orders for cinnamon rolls weekly that I had to control how many were available for purchase. Then there was COVID 19 this made it a bit more difficult to get our cinnamon rolls to our customers so I forced myself to get creative. I developed a cinnamon roll baking kit and also packaged our Bully Mix to be sold through our website doughboysrolls.com. This allowed the average at-home baker to easily make our cinnamon rolls and dinner rolls at home. The Bully Boy Baking brand is not only providing excellent small batch bread mixes but works with other small independent coffee shops and bakeries with not only bread mixes but the education and equipment required to produce gourmet fresh cinnamon rolls in house with limited space required.
The Bully Boy Baking brand is designed around my personal love for food, music and visual art, an example of this is represented in our line of non-food merchandise. All our shirts, hoodies, coffee mugs, and stickers are designed by local artists who took on the challenge of creating art that blends baking, music and pop culture into one design.

Today, what I am most proud of is simply that I didn’t quit. When I started this journey in 2019,
I stayed in a constant state of self doubt. Until I started to dig where the root of that self doubt came from I received my first cheat code in this entrepreneurial game. Some other major cheat codes I received are, perfection isn’t real. Your best is your best. celebrate your wins even though it’s just clearing your email. You can’t control what your journey of success looks like for you just as long as you reach your goal. And last but not least you are a student for life, stay open minded, you should learn from everyone around you no matter how they show up.

Bully Boy Baking is currently moving toward phase 2 with the launch of Bully Boy Cafe.
An open concept cinnamon roll bakery & tea house. Bully Boy Cafe will be a place to chill out, perhaps grab a warm cinnamon roll with your coffee, Or vibe to a local Dj playing Slum Village. Bully Boy Cafe will have a welcoming vibe with a mission of inclusivity for all people.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

Gaining startup capital started with more of a personal investment for sure. When my partner suggested that it might be a good idea for us to adopt an aggressive approach toward getting out of debt, I have to admit I was not excited about it at all. The getting out of debt part was indeed exciting but the discipline needed to make it happen, well that part, yep that part. We each got an allowance, a fixed amount of funds received monthly like clockwork. Next we calculated to the penny how much we spend on things like entertainment, food, fuel, insurances and home goods. We both agreed to stick to the budget even though it possibly could result in eating non-organic eggs and bacon for breakfast for a while. Taxes were another way I was able to collect startup funds. We all pay taxes, right? Every year when I received all that lovely income tax return money I deposited all of it into my business account, that was not fun but yea that discipline part. Changing my wardrobe also helped me bring money for Bully Boy Baking. I took advantage of the benefits of receiving tax breaks for company uniforms, that’s when the merch line at Bully Boy Baking was born. Our merch is my wardrobe. Taking this approach saved some money that would’ve been set aside for the family clothing budget. That’s why our merch is so dope. I enjoy looking good when I step out, why not promote my business while looking good all at the same time.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Like I mentioned in the first question because of COVID 19 it forced me to develop a cinnamon roll baking kit that can be sent in the mail and shy away from delivering cinnamon rolls door to door.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.doughboysrolls.com
• Instagram: @djdoughboy79
• Linkedin: Cliff Lyons
• Youtube: Bully Boy Baking