Crave Eats Kitchen at One

The journey started almost a decade ago when I watched my grandmother bake using the traditional method (Jiko, sand, and tire rim) by making an oven-like environment. The dream was still alive, but the fear of the unknown took over. For the longest time, I feared presenting my work to the world for criticism and facing the competition already there.

Start now, they said! I had all the capacity to start but did not feel courageous enough to start. But the team around me believed in me and pushed me hard enough to start. I made my first move on the 10th of October, 2021. It was scary, I must say, but the first order gave me motivation. It was sketchy and not as appealing as I am now. My fear was proven since there were weeks I could go without selling anything. But I never felt discouraged; I sought knowledge, asked people many questions, and made Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube, and Facebook my friends to get ideas and tricks to improve my skills. It was, and still is, a process! Over the past year, I have learned many things, but I will narrow them down to three: resilience, practice, and building.

Resilience was something I learned the hard way. Entrepreneurship is not easy as it seems; the profits are good, I must say, but the behind-the-scenes operations are bitter. I learned so many hard truths in business. One, not everyone will want to buy your goods. In business, you cannot sell to everyone, and it is important to identify your niche properly since it will make you stand out rather than fit in. Two, you won’t have peak sales every day. I could go weeks between orders, and there were months I could go without a single sale. These were the days I would ask myself if I was doing the right thing. Lastly, there are days you will make losses. In my initial stages, I did not know how to cost and price my cakes well, making significant losses. Let me tell you, even the most knowledgeable entrepreneurs make a lot of losses. I built resilience over the past year and could continue building my business as I took the entrepreneurship lessons. I continued working on my weaknesses. I also worked towards standing out in the industry. It is a journey of 1000 miles, but I am not even 10 steps away; this means that I will continue building resilience since, at every stage of business, you need to build an amount of resilience.

Practice is very important as an entrepreneur since we work towards being better every day. Cake making and decoration are very dynamic, and as a baker, it is important to remain creative and practice a lot. I did not understand how to use fondant, which would make me avoid orders that entailed fondant. But as time passed, I began to embrace the skill, making me like the cake decoration trick even more. I struggled with samosa wrappers, which was always a nightmare whenever I got such an order. But today, I did the wrappers quickly and excellently to the point that I want to make samosa and wrappers a brand for Crave Eats Kitchen. Seeing a baking hack is not as good as practicing it several times. My baking mentor advised me to practice something for at least eight hours per week for a month before selling it to someone. Every day we make mistakes, but we keep improving through practice.

Being a builder is something that has stayed with me. It brings a lot of emotions and reactions. As a builder, I am building the Crave Eats Kitchen brand, afraid. I don’t know what tomorrow holds, but as a builder, I will tackle every day at a time. As a builder, I am taking on challenges that scare me the most. I am willing to learn new hacks from professionals and mentor bakers who are still afraid to start. As a builder, I have learned the value of building with a community since, in everything that we do, there is a village that pushes us to be the best.

To the next year and many years to come, I will remain resilient, practice more and become a better builder.