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

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 background and context?

We have two storefronts in St. Charles, MO. SugarBot Sweet Shop, our bakery, started in 2012. We are a full service bakery that focuses on custom orders, and offers baked goods for grab-and-go on Fridays and Saturdays every week.

SugarBot Creamery, our ice cream parlor and soda fountain, joined our brand in 2018. When we purchased the business, it was called “Little O’s Old Time Soda Fountain”. We began cleaning up the image and brand, and started making our ice cream from scratch almost immediately. We relocated to a bigger storefront and rebranded as SugarBot Creamery in May 2021.

We specialize in “childhood favorites, better than you remember them” at both locations. We use high quality ingredients, and make everything from scratch.

Jackie, appreciate you joining us today. Talk to us about building your team. What was it like? What were some of the key challenges and what was your process like?

When I started SugarBot, it was just me and my mixer. Slowly as I began to gain clients and bigger orders, I’d get occasional help from friends and family when I was still working out of our commissary kitchen. When the storefront opened, we started hiring right away, because I knew it wasn’t something I could do on my own.

I had managed people in previous positions I held, but working with help from family and friends at the start was helpful, because I was so used to telling people what others wanted to do, and this was the first time I got to decide how each thing was handled. Realizing that I had control over our policies and the reasons why we did things was a bright spot for me when we started. I loved getting to say yes to things I hadn’t been empowered to in the past, but also being able to say no to things I didn’t want to do anymore.

When we started to hire our first “real” employees, I hired a lot of folks that I knew from culinary school or friends of friends that had a passion for baking. We also posted employment ads online and at area schools. I learned a lot about what to look for, and that folks that made good coworkers at past jobs didn’t always make great small business employees.

In recent years, I’ve become invested in hiring folks from alternative backgrounds, such as second chance workforce programs. One of the reasons I started my business was to make the community better, and provide a positive work environment that I would enjoy working in, and starting this initiative has helped me work towards my goal of bettering the lives of those around me.

I don’t think I’ve had done anything differently in my hiring path – it’s all a learning process.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I think folks feel like they always have to say yes. The more we have grown, the more I have learned that when you say yes to one thing, you’re saying no to everything else, but when you say no to one thing, you’re leaving space in your schedule for the things you really want to do. I work hard to save my commitments for the things I want to do now.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

I am a huge reader! If I keep on track, I’ll read more than 300 books this year. I work alone a lot, and don’t always need to use the language center of my brain to get things done, so audio books are my favorite thing.

I really loved “Atomic Habits” by James Clear and “The Bullet Journal Method” by Ryder Carroll. While I don’t use paper journals, I carry a lot of his ideas into digital methods (which I’m sure he would hate – but it works for me!).

Contact Info:

• Website: www.sugarbotsweetshop.com / www.sugarbotcreamery.com
• Instagram: @sugarbotsweetshop / @sugarbotcreamery
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackiehuebbe/

Image Credits
Jackie Huebbe, Justin Rowkowske