We recently connected with Crissie Elep and have shared our conversation below.

Crissie , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

I love to cook! And I was always interested in baking and decorating cakes. One day I decided to sign up for some classes at JOANNS for cake decorating and at home I kept experimenting with different flavors and designs. My family encouraged me to start selling my cakes and food especially because at the time there wasn’t anyone really making any Filipino desserts locally. The first step was to get my cottage care license so that I could sell food out of my home. The next step was to build some clientele. For the next several months I made huge quantities of food and my family helped me advertise and sell plates out of my home. Prepping, cooking, and baking started to take up a lot of my time which was a bit hard as I still had my full time career in Sales. I started leaning towards the idea of handing in my resignation and opening up a location or a food truck as my full time gig instead.
My husband and I finally decided on a food truck and so I finally resigned from sales so that I could give my business 100%. We had to find someone to build our truck and design it. Then of course we had to figure out all permits & licensing we would need (which was more than I expected). All that was left was to build a menu and to find events/ locations to set up our truck. Our first event was last summer at the summer concerts at BLR… we sold out of everything!

Crissie , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Crissie. I was born and raised in the Philippines. I love being in the Kitchen. I love cooking for people. I love bringing people together through food. Everyone that would eat my food and desserts would tell me that I really need to start a business. So that’s exactly what I did! I opened up a food truck where I’m able to cook the food that I love as well as a range of desserts such as cakes/cupcakes, macarons, and Filipino desserts. I also offer catering services and one thing that my customers love is that I am able to provide both food and desserts! I heard a saying once that said one of the things people will always remember about an event is the food so I work extra hard to make sure the work and service I offer to my customers is memorable and one that their guests will rave about. I love to hear what exactly my customers want and really try to exceed their expectations to make their events that much more special.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I am a bit of a perfectionist. I like to get things done right on the first try. With starting my new career, a lesson that I had to learn was that not all problems are bad and not everything has to be perfect. In fact a lot of the problems I have had allowed me to come up with more effective and efficient solutions for the food truck. For example when I first opened up the truck we were taking peoples names and shouting them out when their order was ready. A better solution that we came up with was to use pagers instead which helped us to be more organized ands saved us from constantly shouting. It was a bit chaotic inside the truck at first too, but after awhile we figured out a rhythm that worked for us. We assigned ourselves stations like who was frying the lumpia, who was grilling, who was plating, and who was taking orders. It’s definitely more organized now and we are able to communicate better as a team. We also had problems with the truck breaking down due to different things. But because of this my husband was able to get to know the parts and mechanics of the food truck better and now we are able to fix a lot of the problems on our own without needing to hire a 3rd party.
I’ve learned to go with the flow and that the problems can show us that there’s always room for improvement.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

At first my clientele were my family, friends, co-workers which also led me to their family and friends. With the power of social media I was able to expand and so far this has been the best way for us to grow our clientele. The community I live in has a neighborhood page. I used this page to make a post at first introducing myself and what I do. I then started making posts of whenever I had leftover baked goodies from other orders which brought in more people to either order from me or follow my business page. Eventually whenever someone needed a cake my previous customers would recommend me. I did this for other local foodie groups too.
I also started using social media to find events and businesses that needed food trucks or catering. Most of these businesses and local events would promote my business as well.
Networking locally has also helped build by clientele. I recently accepted a great opportunity at a local eatery – Five Star Food Stop- where they now sell my cupcakes and macarons! I’ve had many people message my business page saying they tried and loved the cupcakes they got from Five Star and then put in more cake/dessert orders with me.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.crissieshomemade.com
• Instagram: @Crissies.Homemade
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/CrissiesHomemade