celebrating our 1st birthday!

May 2, 2021

Happy 1st birthday to us!!

I can’t believe we’re celebrating a full year on May 5th. Cue moment of silence to take it all in. 2020 was such a lemon -- complete with several lockdowns, panic, uncertainty, and our fair share of anxieties. But at the very beginning of quarantine, I was (unknowingly) going full throttle for this bakery opening - I had quit my job, dove into studying baking science, and finalized a number of recipes. All for -- myself. Recipe development was always something I had done for the science of it.

On May 5th, we got our business license, and on May 26th, we officially launched. Since then, this humble home bakery has been a much-needed place to put our focus, time and energy. (ok also so many anxieties hahaha)

There’s SO much that has gone into making this home bakery scale through a full year. Here are some of our milestones!

Officially committing to the "Pudge" name (name is by the baker's brother!). It's honestly been so cute and joyful to see people refer to them as lightheartedly as we do!!
Retiring the first few menu items to embrace our Pudge specialty (goodbye, peanut butter, ginger molasses, snickerdudes, etc.)
Getting on Yelp and Google Maps :)
Launching our first website, which was kindly custom-coded by a friend and had a surprising amount of automations that made pickup & delivery pretty seamless - it paved the way for this site!
Automating some of our backend processes to consistently reach a 0% error rate! It's extremely rare for us to mess up orders these days.
In the midst of running normal business operations, testing fall flavors and releasing Pumpkin Spice, Pecan, and Coal pudges (but sending Apple Pie Pudge to the graveyard - it never saw the light of day *cry*)
Making it through the holiday season!!! And finding a cult following for Pecan Pudge <3 (our favorite)
Getting new & improved stamps, and one with our website that has the tagline "another helping please" (inspired by the baker's sister in law!)
Ending 2020 catering a wedding!
Finishing our taxes (boo, taxes suck)
Launching this site fully automated so that delivery & pickups are easily scheduled AND accepting credit card payments so no more Venmo!
Honestly, just using Instagram to interact with our followers and listen to what they want. Using their feedback to make decisions that most people are happy with! (takes some stress off of our shoulders)

Behind every milestone is a truckload of planning, hard work, sweat, lack of sleep, and the occasional bucket of tears. It wasn't just a year of making dough and baking cookies, it was a year of extensive flavor testing, photography, marketing, and laying down infrastructure to grow this business. No decisions were taken lightly, and I often can't sleep at night wonder if we're doing right by customers. I always worry if people will be happy with the changes we make (and really appreciate when customers take the time to give feedback!!). Baking professionally is soul-bearing, but it's work that I'm so proud of and I'm thrilled to become friends with some of our customers through this small bakery.

I'm so excited to continue growing this business so that we can keep sharing the love of Pudge - an endearing name for a silly fat cookie that spreads so much joy.

Onwards & upwards towards our second birthday!