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

Hi Nia , thanks for joining us today. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?

It sounds cheesy, but we really leaned into the business and gave 110%. In the beginning, we focused on our full time jobs, so we weren’t spending much time doing R&D, taking product photos, or even interacting much on socials. The business came second and it showed.

There would be 3-5 weeks of consistency at a time, which resulted in more traction on Instagram, but then work would get busy and Manalo’s Bakery was silent for a month or so. The lack of consistency pretty much halted any progress we made and it was pretty discouraging.

We knew that in order for Manalo’s to grow, we had to find a way to stay consistent and engage our audience, so we leaned in hard! After work, we’re in the kitchen or working on media for 3-4 hours a day. (And if it’s the week of a pop-up, 6+ hours a day) Admittedly, our social lives did take a hit and there were times where we just wanted to throw in the towel, but we both knew that if we did, we would regret it.

It’s hard to stay motivated, seriously. When you’re putting in all of these hours and then there’s a couple of pop ups where turnout isn’t good or there’s posts that barely get any interaction you wonder why you’re even doing this. There’s months where you wonder if you have any support at all. A lot of our friends and family didn’t show up. They wouldn’t come to pop-ups or share posts, and it didn’t feel good. But we kept leaning in, and changed our perspectives. Yeah, we were losing some people we considered friends, but we were also building this whole new network of food industry workers, customers, and business owners that could see and understand the work we were putting in. These people that we came to know are the ones that supported us and gave us a source of strength.

This community kept us going. We cared less about turnout and more about crafting the best product. There was no way we were going to give our support system less than 110%. From the R&D, to our posts, to our packaging, we want to give you all the best experience, and it paid off. About 1 1/2 years later, we’re close to hitting 1,000 followers, and we’re still not done growing.

To build a successful business, you have to keep showing up even when you don’t want to, and that’s exactly what we did.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My origin story starts when I was young and my biggest influence was my Mother. My family was stationed in Germany when I was little and they didn’t sell pre-made cakes on base. That’s when she started baking, and that’s all I knew. My sister and I never had a store bought cake for our birthdays. SHE nurtured a passion for baking. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, knew her as the cake lady. Need a cake? She’s got one for you!

I have to come clean though. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows (lol). She made me help! It wasn’t until I got older, that I appreciated having to help my mom. She helped build my confidence in the kitchen. I started crafting my own recipes in middle school. When I really started embracing my African American and Filipino heritage, I wanted to incorporate more of my culture into baking and cooking. Eventually, I decided to start my own Filipino bakery.

The business became too much for me to handle on my own, so my boyfriend stepped in and shouldered a lot of the responsibility with me. He was there to give business advice (as someone who has started successful businesses), be a helping hand in the kitchen, and make every batch of our Vietnamese coffee! Despite actually having zero experience baking, he’s now slinging dough and making cookies!

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

Let’s be real, there would be no Manalo’s Bakery without a good food. We maintain consistency with our product by measuring every single ingredient to the gram/ounce/etc. so that we create a trustworthy product. If we wouldn’t eat something ourselves, we aren’t going to sell it. People know that when they buy from us today, it’ll taste the same as it did yesterday.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

February 2023, I left my full-time job and put more energy into the business. I decided to work at Kamayan ATL full time so that I could give myself a more reliable income while focusing on Manalo’s. Trust, it took a LOT of work to build a solid foundation. Going from a job in finance to working as front of house staff is hard, physically, financially, and mentally. To be 100% honest, those were some of the best months of “young professional” years. After 4-5 months of working with some of the best people, Manalo’s had grown tremendously. We were selling our product at Kamayan and doing pop-ups. People came to know who we were. Customers still come to our pop-ups and say “Yeah I’ve seen Manalo’s Bakery at Kamayan ATL before, so I wanted to come get some here”. Now, I’m back in finance while running this business lol.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/manalosbakery/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/manalosbakery