We recently connected with Monique Pham and have shared our conversation below.

Monique, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s jump right into the heart of things. Outsiders often think businesses or industries have much larger profit margins than they actually do – the reason is that outsiders are often unaware of the biggest challenges to profitability in various industries – what’s the biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?

The obvious answer would be inflation- rising ingredients and supplies costs have pushed myself and my peers to raise our prices. The common mistake most home bakers and small business owners make is not charging enough for our work, and that often cuts into profitability as well. Competitiveness and and a very saturated market can be daunting to navigate through as well.

Monique, 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?

My name is Monique Pham and I own Momobakescake , a home-based bakery business in Houston, Texas. I also have a full time job working as an tax accountant. I offer cakes, cupcakes, macarons, and other desserts for everyday or special occasions. I take custom orders usually, but currently I am focusing on building my brand and doing some housekeeping for internal business operations. I like to utilize my baking to bring attention to the various social justice issues in the country and around the world.

I baked as a hobby throughout high school and started to contribute baked goods at bake sales for different organizations that I was a part of in college. I made birthday cakes for my college friends and before I knew it, I was juggling studying for accounting exams while also fulfilling cake orders from friends and family.

Some of the projects that I am most proud of are the ones where I am able to be a part of giving back. In 2020, I sold cupcakes and donated all proceeds to various organizations such as Black Lives Matter Houston, SHAPE Community Center, The Re-Education project. I also was able to raise funds for movements and efforts such as Stop Asian Hate, Pakistan Floods, and Palestine Children’s Relief Fund through selling assorted treat boxes. This year, I was able to co-curate and contribute to the Houston Baker’s Box with With Warm Welcome. WWW’s Bakers Box project showcases emerging and established pastry chefs and bakers throughout the United States and Canada, a portion of proceeds are donated to a local Asian non-profit. A portion of Houston’s Baker’s Box proceeds were donated to Asia Society Texas.

Inspired by the Baker’s Box project, I also collaborated with fellow Houston bakers to create the “Aid and Abet” pastry box, with all proceeds going to different abortion funds in Texas.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Trying out new flavor combinations and constantly improving my desserts have helped build my reputation within my market. Putting myself out there at various events and markets has definitely helped, as potential and existing customers can see and experience my work in person. Having a supportive network of customers, friends, and family that spread the word and share my work to their network was also very important in building a reputation. Showing support to fellow bakers on their products and their work is very important to me, not to build a reputation, but to just build a supportive community and comradery as we are all having similar experiences. I often speak out about social justice issues and support organizations and efforts that I believe in. As someone who is overlooked, I want to make sure that the issues and people that I care about are not overlooked and are heard. I understand that it is harder for some of my more established peers to do so, and so while I am lucky enough to be in this position, I will continue to do whatever I can to help.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

One of my favorite sales stories is pretty recent, but it taught me a very important lesson. I make these hand painted snow skin mooncakes for Mid-Autumn Festival, with non traditional flavors. I was honored to be able to be a vendor at Asia Society Texas’ Mid-Autumn festival as their only mooncake/dessert vendor. The festival is usually one of their smaller events, and I didn’t know at the time that I was going to be the only dessert/mooncake vendor. Interest for the festival and potential attendance numbers grew in the days leading up to the festival. I stayed up till the early hours of the morning for several days preparing desserts and making components in order to make it easier on myself. I usually plan on doing everything myself since I didn’t want to trouble any of my friends. However, I felt increasingly panicked that I wasn’t going to finish in time. I asked one of my best friends to help me assemble the night before, and I also asked another friend to help me at my booth. Asking for help in these areas was the best decision I ever made. All the desserts were finished on time, my booth was set up with minutes to spare. And thanks to my friends, I was able to sell out of everything before the festival ended. I also learned to give friends tasks that play up to their strengths. One of my friends has a background in the restaurant industry, where her job was to train waitstaff for a restaurant group. These skills were very useful that day, as she was able to interact with the customers, draw them in, and even upsell items. I am terrible at all of these things, and I was able to focus on what I liked best, which was boxing up the desserts and organizing the remaining items.

Contact Info:

• Website: momobakescake.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/momobakescake
• Facebook: facebook.com/momobakescake