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

VIRGINIA, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

It was early 2012. I was a blissful and happily married mom of three awesome kiddos. I had been working as a Human Resources and accounting administrator at a local car dealership for many years and was well on my way to finally getting my turn to train up for management someday. All of my dedication and hard work were paying off. On top of it all, my hubs and I recently found out we were expecting again. Yay! The morning had finally arrived for our first ultrasound. How exciting? All these positive changes!

So, you know the drill. Off to the doc, put on the gown, hop up on the table and wait patiently while the tech rubs your belly all over with that slippery little wand. Getting all the specs on our new little bundle of joy. Then, back to the room to await the doctor who’d give us the scoop on when to expect our new little nugget.

What we weren’t expecting? Twins! Oh my word, I wish I had a snapshot of our faces when he told us. Literal ‘deer in the headlights’ looks on both of our faces. We had been ready for a fourth child. I’m a planner. I had it all worked out in my head. One final baby to complete our family. But two more babies? I couldn’t even fathom it. I was shocked. I knew in that moment that this would change everything.

For the next two weeks my brain went in circles. Intertwined with bouts of tears, laughter, fear and butterfly inducing excitement. I would definitely have to get a bigger car. This would absolutely make us grow out of our little vintage house that I adored. There was no way financially that having three of our soon-to-be five children in full-time daycare was going to work for us. I realized I had to come to terms with quitting my job and becoming a stay-at-home-mom. At first this made me sad because I had finally made my career decision. I thought I knew what I wanted. Moving up the chain at work and becoming an office manger was a solid plan for our income, our benefits options, future retirement plan, etc. The universe didn’t care for my plans. The more I thought about it and the more my husband and I talked it over, the more assured I became that somehow it was all going to be ok. Being a mom is one of my all time favorite things about this life and I had just been given a pretty hefty nudge to take a step back from the rat race and be just that. A mom. All in. My sadness quickly turned to hope and joy instead. It was wonderful.

Fast-forward a few years and I started thinking about possibly working again. I loved being home with my children but I also missed working. Having a taste of what it’s like to not be in an office environment and live life on my own schedule showed me clearly that I did not wish to work for someone else anymore. Whatever I chose to do would be for me and for my family going forward. What would I choose to do with the rest of my working days given the chance? Cooking and baking had been a long time passion of mine so I started researching online. What kinds of culinary careers could I do that still allowed me to be home with my children most of the time and would be possible given my limited resources at that time? I discovered two options. And I started them both!

First was becoming a Cottage Foods Producer. I registered myself as a home bakery through the Minnesota Dept. of Agriculture and got baking! Creating custom cakes and treat orders that I could make right in my home kitchen while still being with my littles. Slowly but surely, through social media diligence and word of mouth from friends, family and my community, I was able to establish myself and create a beautiful little home-based business.

Secondly, I decided to become a personal chef. After all of my research I found that renting kitchen space, equipment storage space and getting licensed to transport cooked foods safely was not a reasonable goal for me at that time. Becoming a personal chef allowed me to cook for people without all of the overhead. I loved it! I had a handful of clients that I would cook for a couple times a month. My mother-in-law would come over and watch the kiddos so I was able to get out of the house a bit and have some grown-up me-time doing something I really enjoyed. I would go grocery shopping to gather all of the ingredients to create their chosen menu, head over to their house and cook in their kitchen. This was a great next step in creating my own foodie business that fit my family’s needs at that time.

But I am a dreamer. This was scratching the itch for now but my mind would continue to wander to the future. How could I grow my business? As my children got older and more self-sufficient and their needs of me changed, what could it look like years from now? My biggest pipe dream at the time was having my own restaurant or storefront. I started keeping my eyes wide open for potential spaces with a footprint in my hometown of Anoka, Minnesota.

Over the course of eight years a few spaces presented themselves but none of them were quite right and didn’t come to fruition. The closest we came was when my husband and I tried to buy an old empty dry cleaner building in a prime location of our lovely downtown area. From November 2022 through April of 2023 I had been working hard to get this space and to begin creating my dream Southern style diner. About two weeks before the final papers were to be signed, my bank advised me against the deal due to environmental issues with the space and we heeded their warnings. I was heartbroken but trusted my advisors and just had to keep looking and waiting patiently for the right thing.

My social media followers had been privy to this whole process and had my back. A couple weeks later a man one town over was selling his used food trailer and I got tagged in his posting multiple times. My husband and I went to check it out and bought it! In June of 2023 I was a food trailer owner and chef, allowing me to start serving up foods from my Southern roots and getting out into my community. It was awesome and to say I learned a lot would be an understatement. How to operate a mobile commercial kitchen, park a trailer, get all the proper licensing and inspections, source ingredients, get propane, potable water, dump grey water, finding events and so much more. Having employees! Luckily, my Human Resources background and so many years in the customer service and restaurant industry during my younger days gave me the tools I needed to succeed. This food trailer got me cooking in the meantime while I kept looking for my someday storefront.

In the Fall of 2023 a small bakery right on Main Street in downtown Anoka, across the street from the building we had tried to buy, sadly was going out of business. The bakery owner knew I was on the hunt and called me to let me know and to put me in touch with the building owner. What a sweetie! So, in September of 2023, I signed a lease and got the keys to MY new bakery. Five months of hard work and a lot of help from my family and friends later, I opened Ginny Bites Southern Bakery & Mercantile in February 2024. It is a joy! I walk in every single day and it brings a smile to my face.

At the bakery we offer a wide variety of treats inspired by my Southern family and childhood experiences in Louisiana. Pies, bars, cookies, desserts, lunch specials and more. I created this space to feel like you are having a lovely little visit with your Southern grandmother with little hints of the Midwest thrown in. I was born in Texas but raised between both Minnesota and Louisiana. This bakery allows me to be a part of both worlds that I love and to share them with my community. It is quickly becoming a fun gathering place in town.

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

Hey readers! My name is Virginia Louden but you can call me Ginny. I am a happily married mother to five awesome kids ages 25, 24, 14, 11 and 11. We live in a charming small town in the northwest suburbs of the Twin Cities area of Minnesota called Anoka. It is a gem!

My husband and I bought our first house here back in Summer of 2003 and I fell in love immediately. Home is where the heart is and Anoka is home. I love this town so much that I ran for Mayor in 2022 and nearly won! I came so darn close and hope to run again someday, after my new bakery is established and ready for me to take on bigger commitments again.

Cooking and baking have been a passion of mine since I was a little girl. I was lucky to have been raised around many great home cooks with a variety of culinary flavors. Italian Grandma, Southern Grandmother, Midwestern step-mom. Southern mother, a father who was raised in Key West and introduced me to Cuban food. All good stuff, ya’ll. I ate well and I watched closely, learning to cook all along the way.

I worked in restaurants during my youth and into my twenties doing all the jobs I could: host, busser, server, bartender, bouncer, dishwasher, expo, prep, clerical work and more. If it needed doing, I wanted to learn it and my work ethic showed my bosses that I was up for each challenge. These experiences in customer service combined with my decades of Human Resources and accounting background gave me the valuable tools I needed to open up my new storefront bakery.

In addition to my former home bakery, personal chef career, food trailer owning, food sport competing, and now storefront bakery owner, I also founded a food related non-profit back in August 2014. Food With Love, Inc. came to life when an old friend needed food while caring for their terminally ill daughter. We started out with her family and as a Go Fund Me and then grew into an official 501(c)3, cooking for more families with similar needs over the years. During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic our current mission became difficult to continue and we have been on a bit of a break from our mission, but continue to cook meals quarterly at the local Ronald McDonald House while we figure out our next steps as a charity and what the future looks like for Food With Love.

Food is how I show love. I just want to cook and bake and feed people and make them smile.

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

Social media is both a blessing and a curse. I could go on and on about my opinions as to why but for my purposes, as a small business owner with a limited to nonexistent advertising budget, the pros definitely outweigh the cons. It is nearly free and keeps you at the fingertips of both your existing and potential clientele. It is never going away and we need to embrace it. So how did I make it work for my small business?

In a word? Consistency. But there is more to it than that. Facebook is my main outlet of choice and when I first started using it in 2009 I didn’t know what I was doing. At first I surely over-posted about my business ventures on my personal page. Family and friends are pretty understanding at first but over time it can become too much and your personal non-work related relationships and connections can get stressed out and start to feel disingenuous. I learned to separate my business life from my personal life and created business pages.

I had my hands in a few different ventures over the years like my baking, personal chef business, mom blog and product reviews, etc. I was getting spread a little thin with my posting on so many pages and my followers were having a hard time keeping up. After a couple years I made the decision to consolidate all of my business social medias into one all encompassing page. Bringing everything together under one proverbial umbrella not only made it easier for me, but also allowed my page to grow and help people understand exactly what I was doing. Ginny Bites was born!

Now that I had a one stop shop for all things Ginny Bites it was time to dig in and grow. This is where that word consistency came in to play. If you want to stay relevant and in the forefront of peoples’ minds you must post consistently and with posts of relevance. You need to grow your own voice and a real presence that your customers can count on. It is important to have images with your posts to get attention and to keep those images aesthetically pleasing. I currently use a free app called Photofy to create my graphics. I use my own photos as much as possible but they do offer a large library of free images I can dig into if needed. I stick with three complimentary fonts that I have chosen and create layouts in a consistent style that my following has grown to recognize. I do not own fancy or expensive photography equipment so I use my phone camera and take all of my pictures during the day. Sunlight is my friend here so I bring all of my products towards a well lit window and take a few shots making sure not to have anything in the background that would take attention away from the item I’m trying to highlight for people.

I aim to post three times per day during optimum scrolling hours. Breakfast, lunch time and after dinner wind-down time. Some days it’s more or less but I use it as a loose guide. I also make sure to schedule posts to run when I am on vacation so I do not loose any traction on my page. I take an hour or so before I head out on a trip to create and schedule my business posts to run. This keeps me as ‘unplugged’ as possible to enjoy my time away, keeps me in control of maintaining my place in the social media algorithms and I personally feel it is much safer to not let people know when I’m on vacation. They can hear all about it when I get back!

I must also say, don’t feel the need to have your business on every single social media platform. There are so many and they are constantly changing while new ones keep appearing. It is exhausting and you will drive yourself crazy trying to keep up. Your time can be better spent. Your mental health deserves better. Choose the few platforms that actually work for you. The ones that your audience and customers truly use. Focus on those. If you build it, they will come.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

There are four actions I believe helped me build my reputation as a baker, foodie and productive community member in my town. Communication, presence, networking and volunteering.

Communication goes hand-in-hand with honesty. I make it a point to share where customers can find me, what products they can expect to find day to day, and sometimes the process I have used to create them. I have learned to know the limits of what I am capable of doing and am open and honest about this with my base. When I fail, I fess up. I keep an open line of communication so I am approachable. I try to keep a good balance on my social media as 75% business and 25% as a mix of fun stuff like getting to know me, happenings in town and funny appropriate memes or things that aren’t out of the realm of what I do with my business. I’m not just a business. I am a mom, a wife, a neighbor and a friend. Being open keeps me human and a trustworthy piece of my community.

I do my best to be a solid presence in my circles. I show up at fellow businesses and local events whenever I can. I sponsor goings on in town as I am able like the local live theatre, the summer concert series in the park, the small business shopping events and more. Being a small business and neighbor that my town can count on to support them is very important to me.

Joining my local Chamber of Commerce was one of the best business decisions. There are so many different types and styles of networking groups to choose from. You have to find the right fit for you. My local Chamber was a way for me to start meeting and communicating with fellow small business owners like myself and bigger businesses that I could learn from and who could be interested in products like mine. When you find the right group you’ll know it and the many relationships you build over time will be a treasure to your business.

I love volunteering. Sometimes the best way to do business is by doing no business at all. Get out into your community and find causes that speak to your heart. Show up for them in any capacity you can. Show your community that you care and are committed and are a meaningful part of it. Build those relationships and trust with no strings attached or ulterior motives. Be a good human and success will follow.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.GinnyBites.com
• Instagram: @GinnyBitesLife
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GinnyBitesLife
• Linkedin: Virginia Louden