We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Heidi Shabarek a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Heidi , appreciate you joining us today. Getting that first client is always an exciting milestone. Can you talk to us about how you got your first customer who wasn’t a friend, family, or acquaintance?

My first dollar made was a very spontaneous and unpredictable happy day! Let’s take it back to 2017 for a bit. I’m originally from New Jersey and if you’re aware of the state, it is much more diverse there than it is here in North Carolina.
Middle eastern markets and dessert shops were minutes away, so you could always satisfy any food craving of yours. When I moved to North Carolina is 2017, I found it very odd that with the substantial amount of Arabs in the community, not one person decided to open up a legitimate dessert shop. It was always little basic knick knacks here and there in some of the Middle Eastern supermarkets, however no real desserts were made fresh daily and with authenticity. This greatly affected me as I’m a sucker for sweets; it’s my sweetest addiction! I don’t drink coffee, I don’t smoke, so I always resort to some type of sweet for my daily pick me up. Realizing that most of my sweet cravings weren’t going to be met in North Carolina, I decided to resort to one of my favorite hobbies. baking!
It was Ramadan of 2017 and after we break our fast with our main meal, you of course have to seal the deal with dessert! One day, I woke up really, I mean REALLY, craving a traditional Syrian/Lebanese dessert called Halawet Jeben. It’s made from cheese, cheese, and more cheese! A sweet cheese roll made from a cheese and semolina base, has a sweet cream cheese, ashta, filling, and is drizzled with the most aromatic sugar syrup infused with non other, orange blossom water.
Attaining this dessert was never an issue in New Jersey, but had now became a huge issue for me in North Carolina, haha! I was determined to perfect this dessert so that I could enjoy it more often. I also wanted to be able to share these desserts with my children so they could appreciate the amazing Middle Eastern cuisine we get to enjoy everyday.
I got a hold of an amazing recipe and proceeded to make it that day. Being a baker and having that “touch” in the kitchen, I NAILED halawet jeben on my first try. My whole family was in absolute shock. Heck, I was in shock! Halawet jeben is not really a dessert Arabs resort to making at home. It’s almost always bought outside, whether you live here in USA or back home in Syria and Lebanon. To be able to make it at home and taste even more amazing that bakery bought, was such a rush!
Stemming from pure excitement, I posted my achievement on our local FB page that has lots of Middle Easterners. I captioned the photo of my homemade halawet jeben something along the lines of, “I couldn’t find halawet jeben anywhere locally, so I decided to make it at home by myself! With zero intention for selling this product, I was flooded with messages and comments asking me how much the pound was.
I. WAS. SPEECHLESS!
At the time, I was looking at my family member and said, “Omg should I really do this?”
I was given the encouragement needed to answer back to all of the comments and messages with the price per pound!
My first order was the very next day. It was a day of pure intimidation but lots of excitement. I went to Dollar Tree and bought the necessary packaging I needed along with little cards to write “thank you” on.
I coordinated the pickup time that day and I will never forget this customer handing me money and greatly thanking me for being able to share this treat here because no one was selling it here! I have so many customers that have been in North Carolina for most to all of their life and have either never been able to taste this intoxicating treat, or haven’t had it since they were overseas. All the positive feedback I continued to receive about my halawet jeben became so surreal to me.
At it’s core, BlossombyHeidi will always be a business that caters to the middle eastern palette, however we’ve gradually expanded by catering lots of American sweets and treats too, such as strawberry lemon blossom mini bundts (a fan favorite!)
We’re now post 6 years, have partnered with three cafes, and have remained true to my goal of bringing these authentic sweets to the community.
It’s been an amazing, amazing journey and will forever cherish that first bittersweet dollar I received back in 2017!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

After graduating from NJ with a degree in interior design/interior architecture, I found it very difficult to find an opportunity to work in NC because of the need for jobs relating to my field. Being very much work driven, I turned to a second passion that I had since I was very little, baking! Born and raised in the US, yet still very aware of my culture and its palette, I found a gap in the bake shops in NC and wanted to hold the role of offering the community a taste of authentic middle eastern flavors and overall treats. Holding onto an even bigger role as a mother, I was able to own my home-based small business and continue single-moming it in life- where I can work while my babies are still by my side. I remember hosting bake sales from elementary school to university, making all the birthday cakes for my family members, and attempting to incorporate little details from my design background into my little treats. For 6 years, baking became me, and Blossombyheidi was introduced to Raleigh. Middle easterners were excited to taste foods like home, and non-middle easterners were eager to try them. Baking became a way for me to share my passion with others, and the reward of seeing people enjoying my sweets is more heartwarming than I could have ever expected. I’m Heidi, mama and interior designer/architect with a major sweet tooth; I’m currently on a mission to share the treats I couldn’t find locally, so I decided to make and sell myself!

A little bit about my treats:
Orange blossom; Home is where the heart is, and orange blossom is Aleppo in just one sniff. I infuse anything I can with this scent because its aroma is the only one capable of transporting me back to the jasmine-infused streets of Aleppo. At Blossombyheidi, you’ll find so many authentic desserts such as Knafeh, Halawet Jeben, and Maamoul, all the way to cakes such as strawberry lemon blossom and chocolate pistachio rose. Fast forward to 2023, the demand for my flavors reached many taste buds. I’ve partnered with 3 local cafes to serve my treats, shipped goodies around the USA, and can’t appreciate everyone enough for helping my once-hobby-turned-business blossom. <3

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Building clientele in the beginning of any new business is no easy road. I, the introvert, struggled with this aspect of my business in the beginning a bit. You really have to put yourself and your business out there in order to shed light onto it. Over the first 6 months of my business, I greatly relied on my current customers sending out a good word of mouth to their friends and families about my products. I realized people only see/talk/visit others so much and that this method was not going to cut it. I turned to Instagram. I created my business page and started uploading every single baked item I knew how to bake over the years to create a “collage” that was ready to go for when customers first visited my page. There’s no doubt that social media is the most efficient route in portraying your business and gaining new clientele. After Instagram, I realized many of my older aged customers only used Facebook and that by having only Instagram, I was gaining only a specific audience. I created my Facebook page shortly after and gained more likes and followers than I ever thought I could imagine in such a short period of time. Another tactic I greatly rely on is hashtags. Hashtags on all of your posts are basically personal invitations for people to view your page and “like” your work. I always laugh when I look back to when I first started using hashtags and how I would include every single possible description to that product so that I could gain the most audience. For example, if I was posting about my chocolate pistachio rose water cake, I would quite literally make every single word in that name into a hashtag- #chocolate # pistachio #rose #rosewater #cake. This helped me gain followers who weren’t necessarily looking for a rose water cake, but a chocolate cake and then happened to stumble onto my page.
An additional great business tactic to gaining new customers is leaving a couple of business cards with each order, especially if you know that catering order was for an event or a gathering. People are going to want to know where the host catered from and it comes in handy to have a couple business cards to pass around! Til this day, I do this with almost all of my orders!

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

BlossombyHeidi was and will always be a side hustle for me that I take so, so much pride into. I created this business from absolutely nothing- no intent, no idea, no funding, no idea on how this would all scale out to how it is today. I graduated Kean University with an interior design and architecture degree in 2016 while I was pregnant with my second daughter. My eldest was three years old at the time so when I first started my business in 2017, I had two children at home, not of school age. As a result, I couldn’t work in my field.
Being a very, very work driven type of gal, I couldn’t just be a stay at home mom.
Baking has and will always be my favorite hobby/passion. I decided to turn baking into a side hustle where I can do what I love, while still be at home with my daughters. It’s been one of my greatest accomplishments in life juggling mom life and business life all under one roof. I get asked all the time how I’m able to manage these two very demanding roles, and my response is pretty simple. When you love what you do, it no longer becomes a job but rather a passion. Enjoy what you do, and you’ll never feel like you’re working a day in your life.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @blossombyheidi
• Facebook: BlossombyHeidi