We were lucky to catch up with Destiny Mitchell recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Destiny thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you tell us a bit about who your hero is and the influence they’ve had on you?

My grandparents are my heroes. My grandmother isn’t here anymore. But my grandfather still is. He’ll be 79 this year. When he was 8, he had to drop out of school, to help take care of his family when his dad passed away. Once he had his own family, he always told his kids and grandkids how important it was to get a education, and how hard work is to get whatever it is that you want in life. That you can’t expect someone to give you everything in life. You have to work for it. My grandmother, she would offer to keep her grandkids, while her kids were at work. No matter if she was sick or not, she would keep us and help with school work. To show us that family was important to her. And the love she had for her kids and grandkids. She didn’t want her grandkids going to someone else. She wanted to keep her grandkids herself, and wouldn’t take no for an answer. That’s why those two are my heros. They also showed us what they preached. God first, family second.

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?

I started cooking and baking at the age of nine. When my grandparents decided to teach me how to cook and bake on my 9th birthday. I always had a love for cooking due to my grandparents. My mom knew that I could bake. But I hide that talent from my 7 uncles and auntie lol. They didn’t know that I could bake until I was living in Houston, and covid hit. And they happened to be on Facebook one day, and seen all the different desserts that I was making and posting. They asked why did I wait until 2 years after I left Michigan, when COVID-19 hit, to show my baking skills lol. I just looked at my mom and laughed lol

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

Yes it did. I was working for a hospital full-time, while doing my business on Friday nights and Saturdays. And it started to become to much. I remember one day posting on Facebook, “I can’t wait until my business is doing so good, that I no longer have to work full-time”. Not even a year later, I was leaving a job that I had been at for 3 years. I was under stress, crying, going through so much pain at this job. Gid said it was time for me to leave it. What I would make in a 2 week time frame at the hospital, God saw fit for me to make in 3 days of running my business full-time. My great sales were holidays like Mothers Day, Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas. God said to me, as long as I continue to do what I’m doing, he’ll grow my business even more in the years ahead. I just stayed faithful and listened to God. Going to church. My grandparents always told me as long as I keep God first and family second, all else will fall into place from there. And that’s exactly what God has been doing for me and my business.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

I like to make phone calls. If my client doesn’t answer or send me a text asking me to text them, I’ll send a text explaining what the call was for. I also send inbox messages on Facebook and Instagram messager. I make sure I keep my client in the loop from the time they contact me to place a order, to me going to the store to purchase the ingredients, to dropping the order off. I even like to contact my clients after the event, to see if they were pleased with their order. I like to stay in contact with my clients until the very end. All the way until the day after. For me, it’s about letting my clients know that I care. And if something is or was wrong, I’ll do whatever it takes to fix the issue at hand.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @mamamaryssauceanddesserts
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mamamarysbbqsauceanddesserts

Image Credits
Destiny Mitchell