We were lucky to catch up with Melissa Ettinger And Lourdes Ortiz Diaz recently and have shared our conversation below.
Melissa Ettinger and Lourdes Ortiz Diaz, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?
We have been working back of the house as chef’s together since 1999. We’ve hopped around the country doing all different types of cooking jobs from catering to deli to university cafeteria, we’ve cooked breakfast, lunch dinner, and pastry. Consulted for a farm stand and a tea house. This is where we first started developing our recipe for the scones. We settled in Santa Fe, NM in 2021, bought a home and were working for one of the top catering companies here. A year later we decided to move back to Maine and help out some friends who were considering closing their restaurant after 40 years because their chef didn’t show up. When we returned to our home in Santa Fe, we decided to travel to Japan. There we discovered the concept of shokunin. Where you do one thing, and you do it well, with love and intention. After we got back from that trip, we floated around a few ideas. Knowing we weren’t getting any younger, we decided to go with the scone idea. We’ve been tweaking this recipe for years and knew that it was a really good product. We took a huge risk financially and went “all in” on this idea. Turns out, Santa Fe was really open to our idea. After doing a lot of pop-ups and local festivals, we settled into our retail spot. Here, we only bake scones, and offer coffee and tea.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Melissa is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and has been working as a chef since 1993. Lourdes is a graduate of the Florida Culinary Institute and has been working as a chef since 1999. We met when Lourdes did her internship at the restaurant in Maine where Melissa was the chef. After we started a sourdough bread business and opened a restaurant together, we took a trip to Spain and fell in love. We were married in 2018. Other than those two business ventures, we were always working for other people, and working hard. Sometimes 17 hours a day, 6 days a week. Needless to say, our bodies took a toll. When we moved back to Santa Fe, NM in 2024, we wanted to start our own business and do something that was kinder to our bodies. We are 58 and 60 years old now. We are 1.5 years into our scone business and things are going well for us. We are planning on developing a wholesale clientele in 2026.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
We had just finished a job in Maine where our housing, and insurance were included in our job. While living in Maine we were renting out our home in Santa Fe. We felt that we had enough of a financial cushion saved up to start our Scone business and live for a year without making a paycheck. We used our savings and 0% credit cards to launch the business and gave away a lot of scones as our advertising. We figured the best way to grow our customers was for them to taste our scones.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
We started out getting a cottage license and working out of our home. We built a website on Shopify and offered free delivery (actually, we still do this). We went around to many doctors offices, car dealerships, real estate offices, banks, mortgage brokers, any business we could think of, that would expose the samples we dropped off, to the most people. We did all the charity events that we were asked to do. We offered contests on social media sites that the first 10 responders would get free scones delivered to their places of work. Word was starting to get out. Our first year we did a few local artisan events, and a couple of festivals which helped boost our visibility. We did a couple of pop ups a few days a week as well. One of our pop up locations offered us a very reasonable rate to use their kitchen and a small space within their food hall to sell our scones. This happened 6 months after we started the business. This space is a very busy “food hall” that has a lot of repeat customers and that really helped us to have a successful start to our retail business. We also have always offered samples of all our daily flavors. We still believe that the best way acquire new customers is for them to taste our scones. Our reputation is built on consistency. The flavors may change daily but we are the hands behind the product and that doesn’t change. We always sell fresh scones.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://santafesconery.com
- Instagram: @santafesconery
- Facebook: Santa Fe Sconery
