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

Kim, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I’ve always enjoyed baking but when I was younger, I wasn’t aware of any programs that were just for pastries/baking. They were all full culinary programs – which meant raw chicken & raw fish…Gross! So that was out of the question for me. I pursued a career in education and continued to bake as a hobby. As life went on, the unexpected hit my family when my late husband was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Full time teacher, parent to two little ones and now also a caretaker, life as I knew it became incredibly overwhelming. I rarely had time to bake but when I did, it soothed my soul. When my husband passed away, baking became my therapy. It helped me work through my grief more than I expected it could.
Flash forward a few years…kids are teens now and I’m remarried. Covid lock downs begin. We’re in the house all the time together plus trying to teach my middle school English students with the same high level expectations as if we were IN the classroom. I’m a homebody by nature but this was too much. Baking, again, became my escape. Cookies, muffins, breads, loaves, cakes…I baked, and baked, and baked.
One day, a friend stopped by to pick up a box of goodies and said, “You really should sell these!” I laughed at the absurdity. At that point, I had never even heard of the term “Cottage Baker” – probably because it wasn’t legal in NJ then. A month or so later, Fall 2021, I read an article about NJ now allowing licensing for Cottage Bakers. I spent some time overthinking whether this was something I could actually make happen, got my Food Protection Manager certification and then FINALLY, applied to the state.
We’re almost to the one year anniversary of Pot Belly Baked Goods, LLC. It’s been an experience trying to establish a small home bakery, fine tune business ideas as I go along, figure out which direction I want to take this business in the future. All that plus teach full time and balance my home life.

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’m a middle school English teacher – but close to a year ago, I became a licensed cottage baker. A cottage baker is a home based bakery – every state has different rules and regulations that must be followed. Pot Belly Baked Goods, LLC focuses on more classic, home baked desserts such as bundt cakes, cookies, muffins, etc. One thing I am proud of is how I basically threw myself into an industry I knew close to nothing about. I’m constantly learning from fellow bakers, researching everything about small business success, fine tuning my business model, and always trying to figure out ways to reach more of my local community.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

As a teacher, we always look forward to a little downtime over summer break. This last summer, I wanted a mental break from teaching but I thought I would throw myself into baking full time during the summer months. Late winter and spring had been good for the baking business so I assumed summer would be too. Plus, I had more time to experiment with marketing on social media. Summer arrived and business was incredibly slow. It was making me feel that the spring was an anomaly and that maybe this wasn’t going to turn into something. So I would go a day without baking or posting but then I would get mad at myself. I decided to use the slow time to experiment with recipes for the fall so I wouldn’t have to worry about a fall menu when school started back up. Although the summer didn’t turn out to be the way I had hoped, it actually worked out for the best. I worked hard on my fall menu and I’m proud of the variety and flavors I was able to offer.

How did you build your audience on social media?

With no storefront, Cottage bakeries rely on word of mouth. This can be a challenge because often, people are hesitant to order from a random person they don’t know and have no brick & mortar to visit. Since this is more of my side hustle right now, I also don’t put my company out there at some of the local markets that allow cottage bakers (many still don’t). I just keep baking and posting pictures, posting on my local community Facebook group, using every hashtag that might gain attention from locals, etc. Friends and family have been sharing posts, customers have been sharing my goodies with their friends/family as well as recommending on community groups.
I will say, I had NO idea how involved the social media aspect of the business would be!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mycustombakes.com/potbelly
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/potbellybakedgoods?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Pot-Belly-Baked-Goods-LLC-101150612485748/