We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sharon Su. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sharon below.

Alright, Sharon thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

I bake from my home under the MN Cottage Food Law which allows producers to make non-potentially hazardous foods at home and sell to directly to the public. A lot of people assume I have a traditional brick and mortar shop but so far this is what works for me. It does have its limitations – we can’t sell wholesale and we can’t make certain products that require refrigeration like custards or cheesecakes and we can’t donate food to food banks. However, it’s allowed me to keep my other career as a software developer and have time for other hobbies that I enjoy. Work life balance can be a huge issue among bakers (early and long hours), but having a cottage food operation lets you set your own hours for the most part.

Hospitality workers were laid off during COVID, and I’m seeing a lot of pastry chefs starting their own cottage businesses from home under their state’s cottage food laws. Many people not already in the industry also started baking a lot more at home and this also spawned more cottage food businesses. It caused a huge back-order on “pro-sumer” equipment at the height of the pandemic. I think it won’t be so unusual to see cottage food businesses as successful as brick and mortar shops.

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

I’ve been a hobby baker for a long time but I started selling baked goods at various community events and eventually attended a cake decorating program at Bonnie Gordon School for Confectionery Arts in Toronto. My initial focus was celebration and wedding cakes, but I became more interested in making breads and pastries. I took some weekend classes at the French Pastry School in Chicago and also did unpaid internships at various restaurants and bakeries to get an overall picture of the industry.

I eventually settled into being a cottage food baker that bakes sourdough and pastries for the local farmer’s market. I use locally milled flour from Baker’s Field Flour and Bread and local butter from Hope Creamery and I’m really aligned with the farmer’s market mission of supporting local growers and producers. It’s a bit more difficult and expensive, but I feel like it’s worth it and my patrons think so too. I’m also trying to branch out into grains other than wheat to promote biodiversity in farming. There’s so much to learn about the craft of baking and I love that I’m constantly learning.

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

Finding the right audience helped me tremendously. I focused on making good products but having customers who care about quality bread and pastries really helped build my reputation through word of mouth. It also helped that there were other small more established food producers who supported me and were generous enough to promote me through their own social media. The farmer’s market vendor community was great about this and I also joined a Facebook group for Minnesota Cottage Food Producers that’s very supportive of each other. A lot of community events I attended were as much about networking as it was about selling product to the end consumer.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

I joined the Bread Bakers Guild of America and they have a web forum for members to ask and answer questions and the information there has been really invaluable. The members there are from businesses of all sizes. I also enjoy listening to podcasts while I’m baking and in particular I enjoy Rise Up The Baker podcast and The Sourdough Podcast. Microbakery owners have a very active community on Instagram as well and readily share information there. I draw a lot of inspiration from other businesses that I admire.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://persimmonbakeshop.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/persimmonbakeshop/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/persimmonbakeshop

Image Credits
All photos taken myself.