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

Shawna, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Looking back, what’s an important lesson you learned at a prior job

My family history is deeply rooted in our love of this country and can be traced back to before my ancestors first came to this country in 1798. My ancestors had the honor of defending our country starting in the War of 1812 and every generation since has had at least one family take up the mantel of serving our country and I had the honor and privilege of being the first member to ever join the United States Coast Guard when I joined in 1997. Serving for 24 years before I retired I can honestly say that my time in the service has helped us really start out well with this business adventure. I have always wanted to own a bakery and sometimes wish I had started much sooner on that dream, starting a bakery at 43 isn’t the easiest on the body :), but I realized that if i had started earlier I wouldn’t have nearly the life lessons need to fully appreciate what a leg up the service gave me to operate so smoothly. Skills like team management, time management, inventory control, marketing and business management took years to build in my time serving and they crossed over beautifully as a business owner making a much smoother transition that I think I would have if i started 10-15 years ago. I can truly appreciate all the gifts i received serving my country and apply all those lessons to being a successful bakery owner.

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

The dream of owning my own bakery started later in life. Like most kids I didn’t have much of a plan outside of wanting to maybe be an event planner. Feeling a little lost and not sure how to reach my goals it was my mother who suggested joining the military first to gain valuable skills needed for running a business but also to start saving towards future goals. It was a moral event for Christmas in 2002 that started me down the path of one day owning my own bakery. We had a cake decorating competition and that was my first introduction into the wonderful world of fondant and all it could do and the rest as they say is history. I started out just making cakes for friends and family not making anything money wise just doing it for fun and it snowballed into friends of friends until it ended up i was making everything from birthday cakes to retirement cakes and scaled into wedding cakes, all from my home and always on the weekends. When me and my husband retired I was just planning on building a detached garage and building an kitchen/ office space above it and working from home like I had before building up the home business again but on my last day of terminal leave we discovered that the local bakery was up for sale, so we took a leap of faith and started the process of purchasing the bakery.

This bakery has been in Historic Downtown Milledgeville since 1953 and has been a local staple for years. With its history in this town it has come with many blessings and sometimes high expectations of keeping it exactly the same. But our dream was to keep some of the past present for the town who grew up with the bakery and add in new and exciting gourmet items. We have brought new items in and continue to reach for the starts with our taste treats each week.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

We purchased our bakery that has had a huge historic presents in Milledgeville, GA. Since 1953 this bakery has stood the test of time and has kept customers coming in for years even when super stores made their way into town. But with this history came with the unrealistic impression that it would remain exactly the same that we as new owners wouldn’t change anything about the bakery. Being that we are have only been open for 6 months our biggest strategy to win clientele over to the changes has been free samples and just about all products. Getting them to try something new and updated by far was the biggest hurdle to winning over the town.

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

As a new business owner there have been countless lessons learned for sure, but i think the biggest lesson I personally had to unlearn was moving from home baker to commercial baker. There is absolutely a reason for home recipes versus commercial recipes and having to start from scratch on everything was a huge hurdle that had to be overcome. It was humbling and frustrating to have

Contact Info:

• Website: www.coastiesbakery.com
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