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

Alright, Melanie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

After baking in the kitchens of Babbo and Blue Hill Stone Barns, I decided to start my own business, recipe testing day and night for the Cake Truffle. I had some great experience from baking at these restaurants and also going to culinary school, but I was no chocolatier and I have no previous business experience. I spent my days fulfilling office catering orders for friends and family, and at night, recipe testing for the Cake Truffle and developing the website, packaging, etc. The Cake Truffle is jewel-shaped and filled with cake fillings, and also hand-painted. I was covered in chocolate and various shades of the rainbow at all times until I completed the concept and was ready to start producing them out of Hot Bread Kitchen’s incubator program.

Melanie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Mini Melanie is a direct-to-consumer bakery, with a line of creative, hand-made desserts shipped to customers’ doors nationwide. We’re based in Brooklyn, owned by two sisters (Diana and myself), and we also specialize in corporate catering and gifting. We’re very proud of the talented team of bakers that we work with, the creative and custom services we can offer our clients, and the excellent quality desserts that we ship out in the mail each day.

As a co-founder of a family-run small business, I wear many hats. I’m very proud of how we pivoted during the pandemic to expand our e-commerce business. We tested and started shipping so many new treats beyond the Cake Truffle to ensure our customers keep coming back for every gift or special occasion treat they need.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

Diana, my co-founder, is my sister! I am the youngest of three, and Diana is the middle child. Our older sister also lives in New York City and is a great brand ambassador for Mini Melanie. It’s amazing working with Diana. Our skills greats complement each other. I focus on product development, the brand, and marketing. Diana focuses on customer service, HR, finance, and operations. As we obviously know each other and our personal lives so well, we find it very efficient and fun to get to work with each other every day.

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

Most of our clients are in-bound through Instagram. We share our work, customization capabilities, and events on this platform and clients reach out after they get ideas of what we can do for their brands, events, marketing campaigns. As a small business we can offer a lot of custom work through dessert.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://minimelanie.com/
• Instagram: @minimelanienyc
• Facebook: @minimelanienyc
• Linkedin: Mini Melanie / Melanie Moss
• Twitter: @minimelanienyc
• Youtube: Mini Melanie
• Yelp: Mini Melanie

Image Credits
Joel Goldberg photography