Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Melonee O’Keefe. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Melonee, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.

I chose this question because the last time I participated in an interview with you I was talking about how I needed to take a risk to push my business and how important risk is. Well here I am now, having taken that risk. I quit my part-time job 3 months ago and went full time into my own business. It was so scary. I was so nervous about the unknowns and the risk of losing the guaranteed paycheck, but I did it. I knew I needed to if my business was going to have a chance of truly going anywhere. If I wanted to expand my customer base, where and how I was selling, and work further toward the dream of a brick and mortar I needed to be able to dedicate 100% of my working hours to my own business. I was very lucky to have such a kind supportive employer (KB Confections, amazing people, amazing product, the BEST macarons in the city!) who always allowed me to not only be a mother and person outside of her establishment, she always supported and encouraged me with my own patisserie. It was very hard to leave them. It was seriously one of the best jobs with the best people I have ever had in my career. It is incredibly rare to find what I did at KB in this industry. You’re very rarely treated as a person in the service industry, you’re just expected to be a machine who takes abuse. I digress. For years I have been wanting to try markets and fleas in the area to promote myself but I never could because of time. I knew when I decided to leave my job and devote all of my energy into my patisserie that markets and fleas would be where I start to expand away from custom orders only. I immediately just blasted applications to markets and fleas all over the city. Some were a disappointment because I had applied too late to get in, but the majority of them accepted me. I was so excited! As soon as I started getting bookings I knew I had to make a bit of an investment into gear for the markets so I ordered myself a canopy tent, a table, and a banner. It was uncomfortable to put all of that money into something that wasn’t a guarantee but I knew I had to if I really wanted this to go anywhere. I bought some cheap cute baskets from the dollar bin section in Target, little plastic label holders from the dollar tree, and a nice table cloth from Target to get me started. My 1st flea was thrown together but I pulled it off and managed to look halfway professional. I booked a lot of others all throughout the summer, two a weekend most weekends. I have slowly purchased new table displays to improve the aesthetic of my table. Then I had to purchase a printer so that I could not only print my labels required by the health department for my product, but I could also print description labels for my table instead of having sloppy hand written ones. My table looks quite beautiful now! It also feels way more professional. It has been an amazing experience, and a surprising one. The markets that I was sure were going to be the best were the opposite. What sells has been surprising too, and its never the same market to market. The biggest lesson I’ve learned, though, is that my highest profit margin is in my custom orders, not markets. I went crazy this year and cut back custom orders to dive into tons of markets and I now know next year to change my approach. Next year I will be much more selective in my markets and focus solely on my custom orders. Though I may have lost some profits this summer, I believe it was a good experience. I now have a better understanding of what customers are looking for and now know which markets work for me and which ones don’t so I can be more strategically selective next year. I am so happy I finally took the plunge and devoted my all to my business. It has been so rewarding. It’s stressful of course, but in a different way. There’s something that feels more fulfilling in stressing over something that is all yours versus someone else’s business. When I stress and have to put in long hours, the rewards are going to my family not someone else. I get to build a future for my child and my family. I am lucky enough that it is doing something I love to do and am passionate about. It has been quite the process. I’m learning and adjusting as I go. It’s still so scary sometimes but I always manage to work out the kinks, make adjustments, and go on. Sometimes, as much as I am doing this for my son, it is heavy on me that the sacrifice of time I have to make is affecting him negatively. I want him to see that working hard for what you want pushes life forward and doing something you truly love makes life that much better, but I worry that seeing me work this hard is impressing upon him that you have to work yourself to death. That’s not always the case, it’s just how it goes at the beginning. I explain this to him often, but as a mother I’m always worrying that I’m not doing right by him. Then, I had a conversation with a fellow small bakery owner who has gone from home, to a community kitchen, to opening her own brick and mortar. She was telling me how she always felt so worried when she was in her house that having all of the business stuff alll around her house was stressing her family out (the situation I am in right now). Then she said when she moved to the community kitchen she had guilt about being away from her family. Then when she was opening her shop, she always had her daughter with her and would set her up in the high chair or pack and play while she worked, which made her feel guilty. (mom guilt is terrible!) Her daughter is older now and was reminiscing about “the good old days” when she used to spend all of that time with her mom while she was baking and how fun it was. It gave her such relief that her child remembers it that way and now she has built a successful business for her family. It was very encouraging and gave me a sense of relief. Being a small business owner and having to give up so much of not only your time, but also your personal space to get it going is so hard. I just keep pushing forward and working toward the next step to grow the business and move it out of my home. I have been accused of being selfish quite often, but its really not, Whether people want to believe it or not, I am doing this for my family and our future. This is what I know how to do, it is what I am good at, and it’s my way of contributing. I wouldn’t know any other way. Of course it is for me as well as them. Owning my own patisserie has always been my dream, but if I didn’t feel it was also leading to something great for my child and husband, it wouldn’t be worth the stress and chaos inside of our home. It is very hard for my husband and myself to feel like our home is a business, not a home but it won’t be that way forever. Every venture comes with some hard spots and things you wished you could just snap your fingers and fix, but it takes time and hard work to get through. It’s a huge risk that is hopefully well worth it in the end. My husband has been so supportive and has been my biggest cheerleader even on the days when he wants to take all of my orders and equipment and chuck them out the door. I appreciate all of the support I have behind me. I am blessed with an amazing family system and the best friends a person could ask for. Fingers crossed that very soon I will have a brick and mortar opening up! (hopefully in Lakewood!)

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am one of those weirdo’s who had a calling super early in life. I was nine years old when I set my mind to being a pastry chef. I had watched something on TV that had Wolfgang Puck on it and he made this elaborate cake. It was so beautiful and artful. I had no idea that food could be art and it blew my mind. I decided then that is what I wanted to do. I took a vocational culinary class in highschool but didn’t get to do much pastry work. I learned some great culinary basics though. After highschool, I attended a Le Cordeon Bleu school in Pittsburgh for pastry. It was a great experience and I met my husband there. After the program there, I did an externship at Oakmont Bakery just outside of Pittsburgh which was my first real dive into a professional mass production bakery. It really gave me a great jumping off point for my career. Next, I was hired as an assistant to the pastry chef for Monterey Bay Fish Grotto. It was a fight to get in because the pastry chef didn’t want me because I was too green and didn’t have enough experience. I eventually convinced him I could never get experience if no one would give it to me. I’m a natural born hard worker though, sometimes to my own detriment, so I quickly proved he had made the right choice. That was one of my favorite jobs. I not only worked mornings assisting the pastry chef, but I also got to work evening shifts working the pantry position in the kitchen. I loved that. It was incredibly stressful but so so much fun, and very rewarding. I also went on to be the pastry chef of the Hyatt while we were in Pittsburgh. Then we moved to upstate NY by my family for a little while where I got a job running the kitchen of a tea room. By far my most favorite job in the industry. I got to create a rotating menu full of scratch made French and Brittish pastries that were finished beautifully for presentation. I then went on to manage a bakery and create the dessert menu for a bakery/restuarant combo in Rochester, NY. My husband and I decided NY wasnt working ffo rus so we moved here to Cleveland, specifically Lakewood. He grew up in Sheffield and had been wanting me to come to his home area for a while. Here I worked at Wild Flour Bakery for four and a half years. It was such a great place to work and I loved everyone i worked with. Then I took a short break when I had my son. When it was time to go back to work I tried a restaurant again and got hired to be the Pastry Chef at Strip Steakhouse but it did not work out. The job did not fit into my life with my son and the mother I wanted to be. So then I tried working at a Constantinos Market running their bakery department, that also did not fit. Finally, I found KB Confections. What a life saver. Not only did I absolutely love the work and the people I worked with, but my boss treated me like a person. She cared about me and my young son. She let me be a mother and an employee and made us feel like we were her family too. I was there for four and a half years, up until this past June when I finally took the plunge full time into my business. I was always running my business on the side of my other jobs and I finally reached the point where I needed to either take on my business full time, or let it go. It was so hard to leave KB and I miss them a lot. It was the right choice though. Now I get to work for myself, producing my own recipes. It has been a wild ride this summer figuring all of this out, but I am loving every minute of it and my customers are the best! I offer mainly custom orders as I do not have a brick and mortar of my own yet but I also just contracted with Cleveland Bakery Collective in North Olmsted to sell products in their store front. Starting Tuesday 9/6 customers will be able to walk in and choose from a small rotating variety of my pastries. It’s a very exciting step! I offer custom cakes, patisserie style cakes, gourmet brownies, gourmet sugar cookies, decorated sugar cookies, cupcakes, all kinds of cookies, a variety of linzers, finger pastry, etc. All of my pastries are 100% scratch made (with the exception of a few garnishes/specialty ingredients here and there) with quality ingredients and technical skill. I love to develop my own recipes as well! So a lot of my recipes are unique to me. My main concern is flavor, but I always strive to also make everything beautifully finished as well. I am most proud of the quality and flavor in my product; hearing customer feed back on how delicious their order was is my favorite. That’s what really means the most to me. Beautiful finishing is important, but it needs to taste really really good too! My customers pay me their hard earned money to provide a special item for their most important days and events, I would not be giving them what they deserve if my products were only beautiful on the outside. I take care to make sure everything I make is balanced with real flavor, not just sweet and nothing else. From a cstomer stand point, theres nothing I hate more than when I purchase a pastry from somewhere and all I taste is sugar with no descerning flavor profile, If I tell you this product is “strawberry”, it better actually taste like strawberries. Customers can connect with me on my socials, through my email, and through call or text for the time being. I am constantly evolving the ordering side of things to eventually get it streamlined and easier for everyone, including myself. My goal is to eventually get a quality website up and runing where my customers will have preset items to choose from as well as place custom orders. Then, the ultimate goal is to eventually get my brick and mortar! What a grand day that will be.

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

A big lesson I had to unlearn is feeling like I’m not a human being and never setting boundaries. In this industry (the food service industry), you are expected to be a machine. You are expected to do the work load of 3 people, get paid to be 1 person, and do it with a smile on your face and no pushback. If you want your job, if you want to have good things on your resume, if you want to progress and advance, you will just accept the abuse. It’s sad but true in the world of food service. It’s something no one ever wants to talk about and it affects for the front of the house staff just as much as the back of the house staff. Especially if you are one of the hard workers who is good at your job. You’d think you’d be rewarded but no, you’re just treated worse because you’re then expected to pick up the slack for everyone else around you. You’re expected to work unreasonable hours and get paid a garbage wage. I once interviwed and staged with a well known restaurant here in Cleveland for the Pastry Chef position and they offered me the job at a $5 paycut from what I was making at my other job at the time. When I questioned it I was told “well this will look great on your resume, that’s the reward”. This is the attitude of the industry. Work 60+ hours a week and barely be able to make ends meet, but no worries because you have a pretty resume. I started this industry at 18 years old not knowing how to stand up for myself and fell into the cycle of “this is just how it is if I want to get anywhere in my career” for too long. I allowed myself to be bullied and taken advantage of for too long. It had created this acceptance that I was just a machine that needs to put my head down and work with no consideration for myself. Then I had my son and my whole world, attitude, being… everything changed. My life was for him now and I need to find a way to make motherhood and my career work or say goodbye to my career. Luckily, right when I was ready to give up, I found KB Confections and an amazing boss who treated her employees like people. It took a while for my old habots and fears of letting the owner down by leaving within normal hours or having obligations outside of her business fall away. They never went all the way away though. I still wasn’t setting healthy boundaries and expectations for myself. Then I quit to run my own business full time so those lack of boundaries and self consideratoiinn started to affect my son and husband more prevalently, and it made me realize I still have habits to change, so I have been working on that. I am setting more firm and healthy boundaries for work time vs life. I am giving mysef 1-2 full days off a week depending on the week. I am no longer answering messages and emails anytime of the day every day. I am, within the next couple of weeks, going to be setting up firm pickup windows so I no longer have to bend my day around customers who don’t respect my time. Most importantly, I am setting up more firm (I have to bend sometimes because I am a one woman show) work times for myself. It’s all a learning curve and working out problems, but in order to have a healthy business I have to be healthy myself. When I get to the point of having employees, one of my top priorities will be treating them with respect and being reasonable with my expectations.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

The best source of new customers for me has been word of mouth. I know its old advice but its true! When you have a product that is great, people talk about it with their friends, family, coworkers, sometimes even strangers. I have so many super supporters that constantly recommend me and promote me. I have new customers that will pass my info on when theyre happy with their order. It just spreads like crazy. Ive had tons of order inquiries that start with “so and so suggested you” or “I was at a party and tried your stuff”. I believe this works with any product, word of mouth is key. People trust other peoples opinions way more than the business itself saying “its good! trust me!”. It’s also huge when people share their praise on social media.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: instagram.com/sweet_petits
• Facebook: facebook.com/sweetstuffpastries
• Other: fox8.com/on-air/new-day-cleveland/made-from-scratch-2/