Small Enterprise sat down with Katie Cross, director of vegan bakery Cake or Loss of life, one of many three winners of the Small Enterprise x Sage pop-up store competitors.
Cake or Loss of life was one in all three successful companies chosen by our skilled panel to occupy a pop-up store area in London’s busy Oxford Road earlier this month.
The Devon-based bakery creates luxurious brownies delivered via your letterbox in iconic pink leopard-print packing containers. The Impartial named the mail-order bakery Greatest Letterbox Deal with in 2020.
Lifelong baking fanatic Katie Cross began her vegan cake enterprise in 2019 promoting on to bakeries, cafés and eating places. She pivoted the enterprise to promoting direct through the pandemic.
Earlier than her reinvention as a star baker, Katie Cross loved a profitable profession as a fundraiser and marketer within the charity sector, working for the NSPCC and Greenpeace UK, amongst others.
The place did the thought of Cake or Loss of life come from?
It advanced over quite a lot of years. It began after I utilized for The Nice British Bake Off. I acquired fairly far via the audition course of though I didn’t really get onto the programme, which was a terrific disappointment. However I believe it confirmed me that I had a ardour for baking, and that I needed to pursue it as a profession. So, over the subsequent 12 months I experimented with baking and some occasions and that acquired me to the purpose the place I used to be able to give up my day job.
How lengthy has Cake or Loss of life been in enterprise?
We’ve been working for four-and-a-half-years now. We began as a wholesale cake enterprise, however we needed to pivot sadly at first of the pandemic as a result of most of our wholesale prospects needed to shut their doorways. We determined to ship our brownies, which have been our hottest product, via the publish in letterbox-sized packing containers and now 1000’s of individuals ship them as items, largely to household and mates.
What made you resolve to enter the Small Enterprise x Sage pop-up store competitors?
Two years in the past, Cake or Loss of life moved from its kitchen in London to sunny Devon, which was a private transfer for myself and my household. We’ve arrange a bakery in Exeter. The concept of getting a presence in London for 4 days was actually thrilling. A whole lot of my prospects are primarily based in Londoners, and I knew I may get them to return and see us within the pop-up store. It was actually thrilling to be in such a busy a part of the town.
What’s your expertise been of being within the pop-up store?
I do assume that footfall is basically excessive on the street, but it surely’s been more durable than I believed to get individuals to return in. Persons are not too positive about what the thought is. We’ve discovered essentially the most profitable factor to do is to provide tasters on the street and level individuals in direction of the store. Persons are fairly reticent about strolling into a store once they don’t know what’s happening.
What would your recommendation be to anyone coming into subsequent 12 months’s Sage pop-up store competitors?
It’s best to go for it, however you want a simple retail-able product, and you could really feel that the consumers on Oxford Road are your kind of buyer. It’s essential to have put some thought into advertising and PR. We laid some groundwork by doing a little PR work and a radio interview forward of time, and we reached out to Instagram influencers to return and see us on the primary day. We’ve additionally been priming our prospects for every week to return and see us. Doing that groundwork is basically necessary.
Extra on the Sage pop-up store competitors
Sage pop-up store winner #1 – Deborah Maclaren, LoveReading – Deborah Maclaren, managing director of LoveReading, sits down with SmallBusiness to speak about what successful one of many three coveted spots within the Sage pop-up store competitors means to her
Sage pop-up store winner #3 – Katie Hanton-Parr, Baboodle – Katie Hanton-Parr, founding father of Baboodle, tells Small Enterprise what successful the Sage pop-up store competitors has meant for her on-line child gear subscription enterprise
