New Local baker looking for advice and encouragement

Hi All,

Melinda made special order nut free cupcakes for my family and they were terrific.

Even more outstanding though, was her customer service. She checked in very carefully and repeatedly about our order and I felt very comfortable putting my nut-allergic daughter's health in her hands.

Moreover, she drove all the way down to hand deliver them, only to find that the I-90 bridge was closed. Instead of giving up, she drove all the way around to 520 to make sure we got the goods.

She was an absolute doll and I give her my highest recommendation. Indeed, I have already told several friends about the excellent experience we had with Melinda of the Enchanted Oven.

Hi Melinda - I've had a Catering/Meal delivery business for about 11 years and we are building a shared use commercial kitchen space in Lynnwood. I'm not sure if you have a kitchen space yet, but if you don't, please come and check out our space (under construction) on Oct. 24th at 7-9 PM or Oct. 25th from 1-3. We'll have lots of food businesses under one roof and we can share our knowledge with you and also our connections for potential clients.

Great! The address is 4309 198th St. SW. Lynnwood WA. Currently it's a large restaurant space and we're doing construction to convert it to a large kitchen space. It will have a cafe area during lunch hours and a catering venue in the evening, but we are in a retail area so there are tons of possibilities. My job as General Manager will be to promote the businesses within so it's not just a kitchen space, but a place to run a business from with office space/meeting rooms, resource library and a large group of like minded culinary businesses.

Hi Melinda, I work a lot at markets and help my in-laws with a chocolatier startup and am real good friends with a lot of AI bakers locally, so I know the row that you're facing. I'm just going to shotgun some ideas out for you..

#1 Get to your local market. Very low overhead and you get to make face-to-face relationships with people.

#2 Hold Parties Think of packaged catering for people who have gatherings. Build some desserts, and then have some on-hands participation. Calculate it to a cost per person and market it to clients.

#3 Get In Retail Find your best niche of products and start marketing to the cafe's, natural food stores, and small chains. Maybe one of your products could be next to the cashier as a grab-and-go.

#4 Trade-shows & Contests There are tons of trade related events happening everywhere, get involved. Spend on marketing, a brochure, banners, and use them when possible.

#5 Charity There are numerous charitable functions per year, see if you can be the provider of treats. Usually you work at cost but it's a great PR mechanism for getting your name mentioned.

Much much luck to you and your endeavor!

-andy

Melinda-

Do you deliver as far north as Bellingham? We do alot of events in the greater seattle area and especially up north (between here and Bellingham) for our clients and I have had such a hard time finding good desserts for these events- everyone North of Seattle seems to ONLY do wedding cakes or QFC style cake- nothing classy or yummy that can be used for a corporate event. Give me a call or shoot me an email as it would be great to find out more....