Today we’d like to introduce you to Dani Sachs.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Before graduating from The International culinary school in 2014, I spent 12 years in the food industry. Many of those years were spent working in coffee shops and making cakes as gifts on the weekends. Once I finally graduated from culinary school, 6 months late, and a new mom I went into the corporate catering world. Quickly learning school taught me little other than baking basics, and how it feels to have thousands of dollars of debt, I spent the next few years learning the ins and outs of the industry on the job. Slinging handmade bread into huge hot ovens 12 hours a day taught me the time management skills that save my butt on a weekly basis. Working for a local hospital, I had some amazing teammates who taught me all about BOH management, inventory, and catering to large crowds. Although I continued to make custom cakes on the weekends thru those years, I never wanted to go into business for myself. Until the end of 2016, when I found myself jobless and feeling unfulfilled as a SAHM. I started researching how to start my own baking business from home, and within a few months, I had a Cottage Baking certificate, and Something Frosted cake studio was born.
Fast forward thru any years of hard work to 2019, our business was outgrowing our workspace and we were turning away more clients than we could serve. We made plans to remodel our kitchen in 2020, so we would have more space to hire an employee and fulfill more orders. We started demoing in the midst of our first quarantine, but not many companies were not open and many supplies were on backorder, so we ended up doing nearly everything ourselves. Spending 5 months and many many hours redoing this space, we finally started wrapping up around July 2020. By this time nearly all of my clients had canceled or postponed due to Covid and few new clients were coming in. I had this lovely big kitchen sitting empty for months and I was heartbroken. I spent the rest of 2020 working on my artistic style and trying desperately to bring in new clients. To accommodate my clients and the new normal in life, I started offering contact-free Surprise Deliveries for clients doing Zoom birthdays or drive-by celebrations. These usually included a small cake or cupcakes, balloons, and a card. This allowed people to show their love for friends and families all while staying safe.
Thankfully by spring of 2021 people started having small celebrations again and business started picking back up. Now we are in the fall of 2021, our books are packed, and we are hoping to hire our first employee soon. Although we have many plans for the future, I am proud of how far we have come over the last year and a half. We have been published in industry magazines and blogs 4 times this year, and we have been featured on the local news, all while wrangling a 2nd grader, and the trials of my second pregnancy.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Like most people who start a business with little to no plans, I spent the first two years working on pricing and building a client base. Once a lot of the basics were worked out, I started working more on standing out in the local industry, as every corner seemed to have a bakery. Overcoming the notion people had that a Home-based bakery wasn’t ” a real business” or that a working from home “wasn’t professional”. I decided we needed a specialty; this is when I started offering custom dessert tables and narrowed our cake offerings to only buttercream. These were things I loved to do artistically and weren’t being offered at many other places at the time. With these things figured out, I moved on to improving our visual presence to create a brand and help us provide a more professional appearance. Teaching myself how to use a camera, rebuilding my website, and finally getting a custom logo seemed to really improve our online presence. Later we earned an award for our cakes, finally had our work published, and become a Top Pro on Thumbtack. This all helped us reach our target clientele and build the long-term relationships we have with those people today.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Something Frosted?
Something Frosted cake studio specializes in bespoke buttercream cakes for all occasions. We also offer custom dessert tables and balloon decor to set your event apart. We are known for our lovely floral designs, smooth sharp buttercream, and delicious flavors. A few of our products that our clients rave about are our Chocolate ganache brownies, Brown butter rice krispy treats, and our White chocolate raspberry cake. One of the things I am most proud of is our attention to detail, which allows us to make each order unique to each client, turning a dessert into a gift.
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
I think both good and bad luck played a part in where we are today. The bad luck that I was out of work in 2016, led me to work from home and build my business. More importantly, learning how to roll with the bad times and take advantage of the good times plays a bigger part.
Contact Info:
- Email: info@somethingfrostedslc.com
- Website: www.somethingfrostedslc.com
- Instagram: @somethingfrostedslc
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/somethingfrostedSLC
- Youtube: https://www.facebook.com/somethingfrostedSLC
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@somethingfrosted
Image Credits
Bia Photography
