Car­ol Quash

The av­er­age small busi­ness starts with a sol­id plan, a cash flow pro­jec­tion and, most times, a start-up loan from a fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion.

Faith Quin­tero’s Bliss­ful Bites bak­ery did not.

The pro­duc­tion of the breads and treats she sells be­gan in an un­con­ven­tion­al way – she bor­rowed in­gre­di­ents from her moth­er’s busi­ness and, over time, de­vel­oped her recipes by tri­al and er­ror, even­tu­al­ly find­ing her niche in the world of on­line sales.

“I didn’t have any start-up cap­i­tal. All I had was an idea and ac­cess to my moth­er’s in­gre­di­ents,” Quin­tero ex­plained.

The ma­jor­i­ty of her or­ders now com­prise spe­cial­ty cakes, which are a far cry from the box cakes she once ex­per­i­ment­ed on.

“I al­so don’t make nor­mal spe­cial­ty cakes. My prod­ucts are more cre­ative; like cook­ie cakes and brown­ie cakes. I cut reg­u­lar cakes from the menu be­cause it’s some­thing that every­body does. I do more like slabs and I lay­er them.”

Quin­tero told the Busi­ness Guardian she churned out a lot of burnt and taste­less prod­ucts dur­ing the learn­ing phase, but she was de­ter­mined to get it just right.

“I used to make my ic­ing from scratch with Marigold but­ter and sug­ar. It tast­ed a lit­tle but­tery, but I still sold it and saved the mon­ey. Af­ter a while, I start­ed buy­ing my own in­gre­di­ents.”

She would of­ten shad­ow her moth­er in the kitchen, tweak­ing the recipes and putting her per­son­al touch­es on them. Fam­i­ly mem­bers were her first cus­tomers.

“I start­ed bak­ing cup­cakes and be­gan sell­ing to my fam­i­ly. That’s how it start­ed. And then I branched off in­to mak­ing cin­na­mon rolls, brown­ies etc. Now, I have a lot of things on my­menu, in­clud­ing breads and lo­cal del­i­ca­cies.”

Cus­tomers place their or­ders on­line and their goods are pack­aged and de­liv­ered to them, but there are those who pre­fer to pick up.

“They can. But nor­mal­ly when I do the cost­ing, I charge a de­liv­ery fee, be­cause for cer­tain items like cakes, es­pe­cial­ly birth­day cakes, they have to be de­liv­ered.”

All the pro­duc­tion takes place in her home kitchen in Ari­ma, and her prod­ucts are dis­played on her so­cial me­dia plat­forms. But even­tu­al­ly, Quin­tero would like to have a space where her cus­tomers can come in, place their or­ders and prob­a­bly sit and en­joy some of her treats.

“Store­front is mon­ey. Rent is not cheap, then there are over­heads. But it’s some­thing I can see my­self do­ing in next sev­en months or so.” This time go­ing through a more nor­mal route–us­ing sav­ings and ap­proach­ing a bank for a loan to fund the up­grade.

She said even though Bliss­ful Bites is five years old, it con­tin­ues to be a work in progress, just like the busi­ness­es she grew up around, but with the po­ten­tial to go much far­ther.

Her moth­er was a small-busi­ness own­er, sell­ing pies, punch, and things like corn and sweet­bread in the mar­ket.

“It was all hers, al­though she nev­er re­al­ly reg­is­tered it. I used to go with her and use my cute face to get her some sales,” she chuck­led.

Now, as a busi­ness own­er, she still us­es word of mouth and her charm to mar­ket her prod­ucts, but al­so re­lies heav­i­ly on so­cial me­dia to ex­tend her reach.

“I do word-of-mouth pro­mo­tion a lot. I can be in a taxi or a store and I tell peo­ple about my prod­ucts.” But, she said, that can on­ly go so far. On her plat­forms, she can reach thou­sands of peo­ple with one post, with the po­ten­tial to earn more.

“I re­al­ly like mon­ey. I love mon­ey a lot, and I love bak­ing,” she ad­mit­ted.

And just as she had the dis­ci­pline to make and main­tain lifestyle changes that are ben­e­fi­cial to her health, she adopts that same dis­ci­pline when it comes to her busi­ness goals.

“I used to be a fat girl. I am small­er now be­cause I don’t miss my gym time. But when I was younger, every time my moth­er baked, it was like an ob­ses­sion to me that she had to make some­thing per­son­al for me; for me and me on­ly be­cause I didn’t like to share,” she ex­plained.

Now, Quin­tero is de­ter­mined to keep her phys­i­cal and busi­ness health on an up­ward tra­jec­to­ry. She is even plan­ning on com­pil­ing a book of her recipes when the time is right.

“I’m think­ing of pub­lish­ing, but not yet. I don’t think I’ve reached that lev­el yet be­cause there is still room for im­prove­ment.”