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

Rachel, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One of our favorite things to brainstorm about with friends who’ve built something entrepreneurial is what they would do differently if they were to start over today. Surely, there are things you’ve learned that would allow you to do it over faster, more efficiently. We’d love to hear how you would go about setting things up if you were starting over today, knowing everything that you already know.

When I started Borinken Cakes with my life savings I made many mistakes, the biggest one was not putting money aside for marketing thinking organic social media and word of mouth was going to be enough. Even tho that got us where we are at now I would’ve grown the business way faster if I would invest in marketing from the beginning.

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.

Hola! I’m Rachel, and to tell you how everything started I’ll have to take you back to 2010 when I started baking Puerto Rican cakes for my family with my aunts recipes from home. I couldn’t find any bakeries in Chicago that had the super moist and delicate cake I remembered from my childhood, so after some trial and error and with the help of my aunts I was able to master them and add my personal touch. As family and friends discovered this delicacy they started asking me for cakes so I decided to learn more about cake decorating with online videos. Being a product designer at the moment made the learning process a lot faster and soon people outside my circle started reaching out to me for celebration cakes.

After working for 7 years creating toys and craft kits that landed in retailers like Target, Michael’s, and Joanns, I had my second child and decided to take a break from the office world. After realizing there was still not a good representation of Puerto Rico’s sweets in Chicago I realized I had to do something about it and took a training in baking business with the winner of Food Network’s Cupcake Wars and Cake Wars Janelle Copeland. In 2019 I decided it was time for me to share my skills with the world and started the Borinken Cakes Corporation with the help of my mom and sister. I got certified as a food handler manager and my sister and mom jumped in the crazy ride with me. We started doing pop ups around Chicago to see if there was a need for our product. To our surprise, every sale was a success! Most of them we sold out and people kept telling us how much they needed us in Illinois.

After a lot of research and preparation we finally opened a permanent kiosk at the Harlem Irving Plaza in August 1st 2020 and almost a year after opened our bakery in April 10th 2021 in the south of Chicago thinking we would just use it as our private kitchen and do a few sales to help with the rent. To our surprise the community welcomed us with open arms and made our little spot a new favorite in the area!
In August 2021 we finally moved our mall kiosk to a brick and mortar in Logan Square where you can now find a wider variety of sweets and beautiful environment to take pictures with your friends.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

We started with FB and instagram but didn’t had much luck. Once we jumped into tiktok we found our audience and sales started to come in. Till this day 80% of our customers come from the clock app.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

We have an email subscription where people get a free cupcake on their birthday plus they get to know first the flavor of the month.

Contact Info:

• Website: BorinkenCakes.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/borinkencakes?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA==
• Facebook: Facebook.com/BorinkenCakes
• Other: Tiktok: @borinken.cakes

Image Credits
Chuy Reyes