We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Hetty Vorderman. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Hetty below.

Hi Hetty, thanks for joining us today. Parents can play a significant role in affecting how our lives and careers turn out – and so we think it’s important to look back and have conversations about what our parents did that affected us positive (or negatively) so that we can learn from the billions of experiences in each generation. What’s something you feel your parents did right that impacted you positively.

From a very young age our parents taught us the value of hard work and how it pays off in so many different ways. Having been business owners themselves their entire careers, it showed my siblings and I that you truly can do what you love and make a living doing it. That doesn’t mean it’s always easy! And it doesn’t mean you don’t have to compromise in some other areas of your life to make it all happen. But they certainly taught us that these small compromises far outweigh the triumphs and joys of owning your own business.

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 was born and raised in the Netherlands for the first thirteen years of my life. As we all know, breads and pastries there are quite popular and refined. While subconscious, this certainly shaped my interest in baking and pastry once I graduated from high school in the US. With incredible joy I completed a baking and pastry degree in Ohio and worked in the baking and pastry industry in different cities for 8 years before opening Hetty Arts Pastry. This consists of our small pastry truck out of which we offer uniquely flavored, small batch made doughnuts and our freelance pastry kitchen where we also bake special occasion and wedding cakes as well as a variety of other custom order treats. We strive to use as many local products as possible in all of our baked goods to both support other small local businesses and because in our opinion it’s the best of quality we can get our hands on. Another vital part of our business is our genuine interest in getting to know our clientele, by first name and by what they like or what interests them in our community. In a world where you can be anything, we remember every single day at Hetty Arts Pastry that we choose to be kind!

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

The most important thing that helped me build my reputation within my market is the fact that I am me! I believe that every small business owner has an incredibly unique set of skills, personality traits, and goals that are truly impossible to be exactly imitated by someone else. This is why I have never worried about someone ‘stealing my idea and running with it’. By the time this could happen, I’m already onto the next innovative idea! And even if there is any idea that I’ve executed and I then see someone else copy it and do the same thing that is okay because I very firmly believe that a copy of something good is never as good as the original! Add my specific personality and the way I interact with my clientele and in my opinion, it can’t be beat :)

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

When I first started my business, I planned to start out small and raise my own capital as I went along to grow. Quite quickly though, an investor caught wind of my business plan and showed an interest in investing in it. This sounded like a great way to grow much faster than I had anticipated! However, after many months of finetuning my business plan but still hearing that I should continue to chip away at that before launching the actual business, I grew too impatient and let go of the investor opportunity so I could simply spread Hetty Arts Pastry’s wings and let it become what it is today! I hit the ground running and instead of taking on an investor applied for a Small Business Administration loan which was quickly approved and allowed me to purchase the essentials like the pastry truck and commercial equipment for our then rental pastry kitchen. Looking back I am so so happy that I didn’t go the investor’s route as I know that would have been very challenging in both the timeline of being able to execute things for the business as well as having to share its hard earned profits.   

Contact Info:

• Website: www.hettyartspastry.com
• Instagram: @hettyartspastry
• Facebook: @hettyartspastries
• Other: TikTok @hettyartspastry

Image Credits
Jeffrey Crane (photo of Hetty smiling while leaning out of the pastry truck)