We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Wenter Shyu. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Wenter below.
Wenter, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.
My husband Sam had been baking Mochi Muffins since 2014 and when we officially started Third Culture Bakery in 2017, we knew we wanted to lead the company with the Original Mochi Muffin, a pastry that he created out of wanting to honor his memories of baking with his mother in Indonesia and the baking techniques he had learned and acquired through his fine dining experience.
When we started the bakery, we sold our Mochi Muffins to a handful of coffee shops in the Bay Area. From there, it quickly caught fire and within the first 8 months, we went from servicing 8 locations to over 50 coffee shops/small super markets in the Bay Area. We started with offering wholesale because B2B was stable and reliable revenue, something we needed so we could quit our day jobs and make this a full time pursuit.
After 9 months, we both dedicated full time to Third Culture Bakery and then in 2018 we opened up our first retail store – offering our Mochi Muffins and paired them with hand-whisked matcha green tea drinks.
We quickly outgrew our first little shop and kitchen so in early 2019 we signed on to a 3,000 sq/ft production facility to accommodate our 70+ wholesale accounts at the time and our retail operations.
Our strategy was always simple – to quickly grow and make our operations viable and also share the story of our upbringing as Third Culture Kids and all the foods that came with that upbringing. But we did take each step very, very carefully and thoughtfully – we started the bakery with just $3,000 in our pocket and A LOT of coffee!
Wenter, 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?
We are Third Culture Bakery, home of the Original Mochi Muffin®, butter mochi donuts, and other foods and drinks inspired by our upbringing as Third Culture Kids—kids who grew up in a culture different than that of their parent’s. After falling in love in Berkeley, CA, Chef Sam Butarbutar and Wenter Shyu started a bakery journey together, offering pastries reflective of their childhood in Indonesia and Taiwan. Third Culture Bakery started as a two-man-show in 2016, offering the Mochi Muffin® to just six wholesale coffee shops.
Their first year was crazy. While Wenter worked a full-time job, Sam worked in the kitchen full-time. Wenter would work 9am to 6pm, finish work, and then come to the kitchen to help Sam finish baking and dishwashing. Afterwards, the two would deliver to all the wholesale accounts at 2 or 3 in the morning, watching the sun rise on the freeway as they drove back home. The Mochi Muffin® quickly gained momentum and a cult following in the Bay Area, and a year later, the two were able to hire their first help. By 2018, the bakery had grown to over 60 wholesale locations with a team of 20+ full time bakers, managers, delivery drivers, and retail members.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
We started our business model as a wholesale-driven bakery, servicing other businesses like coffee shops or markets. But the pandemic changed all of that as all of our 75 wholesale accounts dropped off over night. What saved us and kept the ovens on was our little retail shop in Berkeley that we reopened after the initial closures of a week.
We reopened after a week of closure in March of 2020 to booming business as we were one of the only businesses that was open at the time. This helped us retain every employee as we did not need to lay anyone off. And from then, we’ve been focusing on the retail side of our business and this also helped us retain more control of our products and storytelling, it truly was a win-win and we’re lucky enough to still be doing what we do.
We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.
I met Sam at a baker’s brunch, where a few of the local bakery owners got together to chat and eat. I was star struck when I realized he was the Mochi Muffin man that’s been written up about locally and I was a fan of his muffins! He asked me out on a “business date” a few days later and then on a real date a week after that. And the rest is history I guess! Because now, almost 8 years later, we are married with a dog and 20+ kids; our bakery is our chosen family and so every one of them is our beloved kids.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thirdculturebakery.com
- Instagram: thirdculturebakery
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