We recently connected with Cristina Tovar and have shared our conversation below.

Cristina, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

When I first started Flourbud I wanted to utilize all these incredible farms we have here on Long Island because it drives my creativity and inspires me to see what is growing at any given time. Using things at peak season when they taste the best makes a difference in our baked goods. People always talk about farm to table restaurants, but not farm to table bakeries. I know I’m not reinventing the wheel here because there are bakeries out there that do the same, but it’s a neat way of connecting with small, local, farmers and showcasing what they work so hard on growing. We make it our mission to use local whenever we can within reason, and we always make everything from scratch using whole ingredients. Doing it from scratch helps control the flavor, sweetness and texture of our products. It allows customers to know exactly what they are consuming because they can read all of the ingredients, and in my opinion, it really makes a difference in the taste of the end product.

This way of thinking all started back in college. I went to Suffolk community college for the pastry program. While I was there, we learned to bake from scratch- no boxes or cutting corners and everything started with raw ingredients, milk, butter, eggs etc. I remember going to the North Fork Table & Inn on a field trip with the culinary club and thinking THIS is how I want to cook and bake. On their menu they had the names of the farms they had gotten their ingredients from, and I remember thinking it was the coolest thing ever. I also studied abroad in Italy and all the ingredients we used were always fresh and you could taste the difference in what you can get at some of the bakeries that I’ve been to back home.

When I first started in this industry, I worked at a mom-and-pop cupcake shop and it was pretty horrendous. We would use boxed cake mixes and everything was a mess. It was totally not what I wanted to do, that I kind of swore off working in bakeries for a while because I assumed they were all like that.

Eventually I started working at a boutique hotel that had a 1 acre farm on the property. Not everything we used was from our farm but we did get a lot from local farms if we didn’t grow it ourselves. I had that feeling all over again that I had in college. Like yes, this is it- THIS is how I want to cook and bake. Every time I made a move in my career, I would find places that had the same mentality. Over the years I have made great connections with farmers like Jenn from the Milk Pail in Watermill, Patty from Early Girl Farm in Brookhaven & May at Ocean Fog Farm in Eastport.

Cristina, 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 started in the restaurant/ hospitality industry when I was 15 as a waitress at a catering hall. I’ve been a bartender, server and maître di all during grade school and bits of college. After I had gotten a fine art degree, I went back to school for pastry and ended up also taking all of the culinary classes too. I’m not sure why I didn’t think of that the first go around because I grew up in a family that loves to cook. My mom is the baker and would make us a school bus cake on the first day of school every year.  My dad is the cook in our family and always had a ton of cookbooks and I would flip through them and find a picture I liked and try to recreate it. My parents love to tell a story about when I was 12, I followed a recipe to make pasta. When they came home, I had fettuccini drying on strings across the kitchen cabinets all because I wanted to make alfredo.

During the pandemic, the restaurant I was working at went down to bare bones staff and unfortunately a pastry chef wasn’t a necessity. I found another full-time job, but it wasn’t cutting it creatively for me. After work I would bake at home with a NYS home processors license and one the weekends my husband would sell my pastries at farmer’s markets. Flourbud was created in August 2020 and by July 2022 I was able to quit my job  and rely solely on my business. By Jan 2023, I found a space close to home, in East Moriches, NY

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

Since I was still working when I started Flourbud, after important bills were paid, I would buy a little bit of ingredients or a small piece of equipment. Once I knew that I wanted to really grow and invest money into what I was doing, I took out an interest free credit card. I would buy a big piece of equipment like a dough sheeter or a fridge and then pay it off before it would start collecting interest. I know that was probably a terrible way to go about it because I didn’t know for sure that I was going to sell enough product to pay the card off, but I was overly confident in what I was making and it worked out in the end. When I opened the bakery, I saved money working from home with minimal overhead and no staff to pay that I ended up only needing a small business loan to get the store front going.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Word of mouth is definitely the best source for new clients. It’s awesome when customers come in and they tell us that they had a cake at a party that we made, or they went to a brunch where our pastries were served. The fact that they enjoyed it so much they had to come into the bakery or follow us on Instagram is really cool.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.flourbudbakery.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/flourbudbakery
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/flourbudbakery

Image Credits
Cristina Tovar