Youtube sparked Acio’s baking hustle

Three months into her cupcakes escapades, Acio resigned her job because she was expecting and the workload had become overwhelming. She decided she would look for a less stressful job instead as well as have enough time to nurse her little baby. 

Cake accessories
In order to turn her passion in the kitchen into a full-time paying job, Acio needed capital to procure some kitchen appliances such as an oven, mixers, accessories and ingredients. 
“To invest in my newfound hustle, I would load enough data, specifically for learning purposes. I was constantly searching for cake recipes on YouTube and Google,” she says. 

But she would have to modify the new knowledge of foreign cake recipes to suit the demands of her local market. 
“At the beginning, I would bake cake and serve it to 10 people who would do the tasting, in order to share feedback on how the new recipe tasted. I would use this information to make improvements before baked cake for sale,” she says. 

The first two cakes she baked were really bad. Her first two jobs almost made her quit the cake hustle.  “It is not like I had gone to a catering school. I relied on the Internet for my try and error methods. Even bakers then were not willing to share information. It was a tough world replicating what I had learnt on YouTube into real cakes in order to make sales,” she recollects. 

After spending a lot of money trying out recipes and ending up with poor quality cakes, Acio got her very first job.
According to her, she could not sell mediocre cakes because they attract mediocre customers, which is not good for business.

Her mantra was ‘If you are going to do something, do it to the best of your ability.’
Her first order lacked coordination. Much as she had mastered baking, she needed more lessons on how to make finesse touches of decorating cake, which included icing. 

Her first big order
Being a newbie in this business, she did not have access to senior bakers for guidance and this resulted into many losses, especially on the fondant that was nearly the price of the cake itself.

After several trials, she got an order to bake a five-tier cake. “I executed this assignment to perfection. Unfortunately, the cake slid off the board enroute to the party venue and the process of fixing it cost almost five cakes, including the first and last tiers plus the side cakes,” she recollects. 

She made a new design by ordering more fondant on debt and got cakes from another bakery.

Marketing 
Acio says most of her clients come from Facebook and through referrals. She also attributes her success so far to the quality pastries she makes. 

“When a cake does not turn out as perfect as I want it, I don’t give to the client. A poorly done job dents my name. When you are starting out in business, you need to build trust with clients through making quality products in order to beat competition,” she explains. 

She currently has two permanent workers whom she pays salaries and a team of four that gets wages.

Challenges
According to Acio, pricing of cakes is no mean task, especially when it comes to clients who need replicas of cakes they see on online. She says most of these cakes clients order turn out to be pricier than what they are  willing to pay 

“Before pricing a cake order, I first check with my suppliers to see if they fit in the budget or if they are available. That determines my price. And there is always an option of non-customised cakes if the offer fails on the preferred cake.”
Delivery also became a problem since Acio had about 10 delivery guys to deliver about 30 cakes in a day, 20 of which mainly fall under the same time. “If I cannot deliver on time, I tell my clients the truth. Sometimes I lose out on clients but it is safer. One time, a delivery guy ran away with my money after the client had made payment,” she says. 

Lockdown was a turning point
While most businesses came to a standstill during the lockdown periods, for Acio, this was the time she made the most out of her cake business.  

She discovered an affordable way of delivering her cakes when cars were not allowed to move. Delivering cakes using SafeBoda helped tone down the transport prices and in the safest way possible. She also boosted her deliveries during lockdown. 

Acio also started asking for a deposit for every order she got for commitment purposes. “I used to take orders but some clients either did not pay, paid days or months later or they cancelled the order abruptly. When someone makes a deposit, you know they are serious about the order,” she says.

Baking is a hectic job and time-consuming that if one is not passionate, quitting comes easy. 

Achievements
Acio says she has managed to upgrade her bakery in four years.  “I used to bake from my house but now I have installed a fully-fledged bakery,”  she says. 

In addition to upgrading, she has acquired assets for herself and mentored many young bakers. Acio also looks forward to expanding her business and boosting sales. 

In peak seasons, she makes 300 cakes per month, which she distributes all across the country. Sometimes, she exports cakes to Kenya, Rwanda and the US. Acio also makes cakes for spontaneous orders. She plans to make Maselah Cakes brand a houshold name.  

Lessons

In order to juggle business with family, Acio has drawn a schedule, which has days for baking and days for decorating. “On Sundays, I bake for Monday and Tuesday orders. Wednesdays, I bake for Thursday orders and on Friday, I bake for Saturday and Sunday orders. It gives me some days off,” she says. 

In her line of business, Acio believes procrastination is a thief of time. “If you do not do what needs to be done now, anything could go wrong in the next hour or day,’’ she says. 

She urges bakers and other businessmen to persevere in order to realise the fruits of investing in business. “If I quit on my second cake order, I would not be where I am today,” she says. 

According to Acio, concentrating on one particular thing and being the best at it is, especially in the initial stages of a business, is better than doing multiple ventures and failing miserably at all of them.