We were lucky to catch up with Hannah Edwards recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Hannah thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?
Growing my business to where I’m at today has been a slow and steady process. I started back in college, making cakes for friends’ birthdays. It was never for profit, just a fun gift. When I got unexpectedly pregnant with a high risk pregnancy at 20 my (now) husband and I moved back to my hometown and college plans were derailed, but I was fortunate enough to be able to focus on parenting. While raising my kids I continued to make cakes for friends and family, which slowly turned into friends of friends. When I began getting requests outside of that range I decided to try to make a legitimate business out of it. I became a Cottage Food Operation, which is a way to legally sell food out of your home. As word of mouth spread and as I advertised more on social media I began to get steady work. I now reliably have as many orders as I can handle most weeks. It’s wonderful and sometimes very stressful. Now that all 3 of my kids are school-aged I’ve been able to take on more orders than before without having to give up as much of my work-life balance. I recently started offering a new service, a cart I bring to events where I assemble made-to-order cupcakes (a la ice cream sundae). I go back and forth on the idea of ever having a store front. The ambitious side of me wants it, but the side that values the freedom and flexibility I’m so fortunate to have is unsure. We’ll see what the future holds!
Hannah, 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?
I’m a home bakery owner and cake decorator! While I make a variety of desserts my main focus is on custom cakes. I also offer a cupcake cart for events, where I provide a variety of cupcake flavors, frostings, sauces and toppings so guests can choose all of their flavors and I can assemble to cupcakes for them to their taste. I strive for my desserts to not only look great but also taste amazing. I pride myself on the number of messages I get from customers after they’ve had my desserts telling me how great they tasted, it always makes me so happy to hear!
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
Social media can be scary for a small business, one bad review and things can quickly go downhill. BUT it can also be a great tool. I credit a lot of my reputation to happy customers posting about my desserts on social media, specifically Facebook mom groups. Things were growing slowly for me several years back, but then I had a couple of different customers post about the cakes they got from me and I suddenly had so many more orders. Now I do appreciate it when customers tag my business or leave reviews. On the occasion a customer isn’t 100% happy with their order I do whatever I can to make it right.
Have you ever had to pivot?
When I was in college my major was elementary education. Teaching was a dream I had since I was young. When I got pregnant and we moved back to my hometown I thought maybe that path would just be on hold, that I would pursue it again when we were back on our feet. It turns out instead I kind of fell into the baking world. It definitely wasn’t planned, but I’m so happy everything turned out the way it has. This ended up being something I feel I’m really good at, and that works for myself and my family.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.shortnsweetcakes.com
- Instagram: @shortnsweetbaker
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shortnsweetbaker?mibextid=LQQJ4d