We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sofia Demetriou a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Sofia, thanks for joining us today. Do you have any advice regarding quality control and maintaining quality as your brand grows?
From very early on in my career, I was very adamant about keeping the quality of my products absolutely the same as when I started creating these recipes in my kitchen over a decade ago. I find that it’s very common for businesses, especially food businesses to cut costs during challenging times, which quite often means cutting the quality of the product to meet demand. However, with such a niche product in a market that has very quickly become super saturated with other competing brands, maintaining quality was and always will be the most important thing to me. In order to maintain the quality of our products we had to make some cuts in other areas. We achieved that by cutting the cost of labor and automating a very large portion of our production.
Sofia, 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?
Curiously enough, baking was always the farthest thing from my mind when it came to choosing a career path. I had actually studied and graduated with a degree in interior design from FIT. My family had been in the bakery business for close to 100 years, starting with my great grandfather, and then my grandfather and all of his brothers. When it came time for my mother to take over the family business, she instead went into the medical field. Baking, however, was always part of our lives. We always baked together as a family and it was something I always viewed as therapeutic and comforting. I had gotten married and had children at a relatively young age. It was then that my role as an interior designer took a backseat and I decided to stay home to take care of my kids. I quickly realized that as fulfilling as it is to have the opportunity to take care of my kids, I also felt a void and the absolute loss of myself during that time. Baking seemed to give me purpose again and the process of creation filled my days with joy. And best of all, it was something that I enjoyed doing with my kids. My progression from home Baker to business owner was something that took a very long time. I would say the first 8 to 10 years I baked custom cakes and desserts from a studio that I had set up in my home, which was wonderful as I had the best of both worlds. Being able to have the freedom to be around my children, and to earn an income all the while fulfilling my creative desires was amazing. It also helped me hone my skills in both Baking and Cake artistry.
I quickly noticed, however that my skills were becoming better and better and people started to take notice. Things started to get very busy for me when I did a show on WE network with Sylvia Weinstock called Iced with Sylvia Weinstock. When my partner and I won the cake competition, I noticed that people were placing more and more orders and things were about to get crazy. I went from doing maybe one cake a week to doing 8 to 10 cakes a week which meant that I was very quickly outgrowing my little studio at home. It was time to open up shop!
Back in 2015 I opened up The Sweet Duchess, a little custom cake shop in East Meadow of Long Island. Along with custom cakes, I also did mini desserts, cookies, pies, dessert tables, and dessert catering for events.
My passion for reinventing traditional desserts was something that helped propel my career forward, especially when it came to my stuffed cookies. As wonderful as a traditional desserts are, I always felt that there’s always room for improvement and that’s when I came up with the idea to start stuffing cookies and to use different desserts as the inspiration for new flavors.
I had been making thick jumbo cookies for clients for special occasions all the while, but never really thought to offer of my Cookies as an entirely separate business.
It was during that time that I unfortunately started going through a divorce. It was also at that time that a family member approached me about opening up a small shop that would sell only Cookies. I thought it was that this would be a good opportunity to introduce my stuffed cookies and the large variety of flavors that I had been working on. I initially thought that providing cookies for wholesale would be easy enough, and I could still manage to work on my cakes and dessert tables. But my initial predictions were completely off. Within two weeks of opening, my cookies went viral! I went from thinking I was going to make 500 to 1000 cookies a week to making double or triple that per day! But that’s when things started taking a different turn. I quickly realized that I had just started working with a someone that was harnessing a very toxic work environment. But this toxic work environment made me quickly realize that I didn’t need to be in that situation too get my cookies out into the world for everyone to try. All I needed to do this was in me and my abilities. And that’s where the story of Duchess Cookies starts.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
When my partner and I first started Duchess Cookies we knew very quickly on that to stand out we had to make a big splash. We had two pop up stores opening up in Manhattan simultaneously, and with so much money on the line, we knew that whatever we had to do had to be big. That is when I came up with the idea of the “$1000 cookie”. For this, we enlisted the help of one of the biggest food influencers at the time, Jonathan Cheban, aka the Food God Who is also best known for being one of Kim Kardashian’s closest friends. When we approached him with the concept of the $1000 cookie, he was very confident that this was something that was up his alley and would get great press.
The cookie itself was made of Ruby chocolate, which was a new species of chocolate, not yet available United States at the time. Luckily, I was able to get some sent over through a relative in Europe and I went on to start creating something that would set our brand and product apart from everyone else’s. The gold encrusted red velvet Ruby chocolate cookie was nestled in a Baccarat catch all, and is nestled in a chocolate sculpted shoe with a 36” pearl necklace draped on it. With Food Gods help, our cookie went viral! Next thing we knew we had news crews flying in from Germany, Columbia, Greece, and other parts of the world to interview me and take a look at how we produce our cookies. I do believe that hiring the right type of marketing help was something that not only helped us use our marketing budget effectively, but also gave us residual notoriety even months after our brand was launched.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Being that we as a brand wanted to focus on wholesale versus running our own stores that was something that became extremely challenging as we very quickly found out that people that we were working with, also wanted to knock off our cookies and make their own in the likeness of ours. Early on there were two or three companies that ended up knocking off our menu and concept, despite us having built a strong wholesale relationship with them. Unfortunately, when things like this happen, it does sour your faith in your business relationships and humanity in general, but it certainly does not deter us from keeping on and creating…because after all, they are knocking us off for a reason and that’s because we have what they want.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.duchesscookies.com
- Instagram: @duchesscookiesnyc
- Facebook: Duchess Cookies NYC
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sofia-demetriou-b13a7b1a3?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app