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

Courtney, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you take vacations? Why or why not?

I absolutely do. Burnout as a business owner is a very real concern for a lot of people. Most people don’t realize that running a business takes everything that you have. It can take a toll, especially mentally. Even if you have a day where you’re not physically present, mentally you still are.

I believe that disconnecting and taking care of yourself is a top priority. If you’re not at your best, you won’t be able to give your best to the business. We’re entering an era where self care is prioritized over “the grind” and I think that’s extremely important for future generations. Most of the time, I put my business and my staff first. I pick up shifts, I spend my days not physically at work working from home on paperwork and back end business items, I field phone calls and text messages on a daily basis well outside normal business hours. Vacations give me the opportunity to actually disconnect. To put the stress and worry aside and to put myself first for a short while.

You only live once, take the vacation.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Hello! I’m Courtney Augsback and I am the owner of The Little Spoon Bakery & Cafe in Newport, KY.

We are a small local bakery that specializes in gourmet treats such as macarons, jumbo cupcakes, jumbo cookies, cinnamon rolls and decorated sugar cookies. We also have a full service espresso bar where we serve a wide range of coffee and tea products.

Since 2019 we have expanded from a 1 woman home business to a retail business with 3 bakers and 7 baristas not including myself and my husband who manage the bakery & cafe operations.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Absolutely! As a business owner, you’re constantly having to pivot. One thing I didn’t expect when we opened the Bakery was the transition I would go through from Employee to Manager/Owner. It took a while to adjust. When I started this business it was just me in my kitchen and everything fell on my shoulders. Once we opened our second pop up in the Octagon at the Levee, I had to hire baristas to help manage the day to day but I did all of the baking myself, until I couldn’t. The volume started increasing and I realized I couldn’t do it all myself. I hired by first baking assistant and we would bake together every week.

Since then, we’ve moved into our permanent location and our volume has increased even more. Because of that I have had to pivot my priorities to focus more on the business management side with my husband instead of baking as much as I used to. I now have a 3 person baking staff that continues to produce the most incredible baked goods and come up with delicious new products. They have flawlessly learned my recipes and techniques but they also bring their own variety and talents to the table. A few years ago, that idea of giving up control of my recipes would have terrified me, but currently I do not know what I would do without my baking team. They are absolutely incredible and are proof that not all change is bad.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

Yes it did! In February 2017 while I was working in finance, I made my first batch of sugar cookies. I was inspired by a local bakery that made snarky conversation heart cookies, they were so cute I wanted to make my own. Mine turned out as you would expect a first attempt to turn out, not great. But I loved them so I posted them on social media and brought the leftovers into my office. A month or so later, I started to receive requests from friends and family to make cookies for events.

As I made more cookies, my skills improved and I officially launched my home business making cookies on the side. By the following year, I was making so many orders I was getting burnt out trying to juggle cookies and my full time job so I took a brief break from custom orders. During that time, I started to figure out what the next steps would be, because I couldn’t keep juggling two jobs for long.

In 2019 with the support of my husband, we started to explore the idea of opening a business. I started looking around for potential locations and as we had just moved to Newport, I set up a meeting with Newport on the Levee. I grew up going to the Levee and while I thought it would be a long shot, I had to check it out. After our meeting with the Levee, we were offered a free storefront to sell cookies for their Winter Wonder event. After getting that offer, I put my 6 month notice in at my full time job.

Winter Wonder was a huge success and after a discussion with management, we found that if we could serve coffee, we could become an essential business at the Levee. We were given an offer to come back in a few months and set up shop in a small octagonal shaped building in the outside courtyard by the Newport Aquarium while our cafe was built. We were supposed to open in “The Octagon” on April 1, 2020 but with the Pandemic, we were delayed and ended up opening on May 28, 2020. We did not have a kitchen in the octagon so we did all of our baking at the Incubator Kitchen Collective, which is a shared kitchen located in Newport, KY.

We operated out of the Octagon for a year, before we moved inside the Gallery building where we opened on May 29,2021. Moving into our own space allowed us to move all of our baking to our back of house and to expand our coffee offerings. It’s been an exciting ride so far and we’re excited to see what the future brings!

Contact Info:

• Website: littlespoonnewport@gmail.com
• Instagram: @littlespoonnewport
• Facebook: facebook.com/littlespoonnewport

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