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 every of three profitable companies chosen by our skilled panel to occupy a pop-up store house in London’s busy Oxford Road earlier this month.

The Devon-based bakery creates luxurious brownies delivered by means of your letterbox in iconic pink leopard-print packing containers. The Impartial named the mail-order bakery Finest 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 throughout 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 concept of Cake or Loss of life come from?

It advanced over plenty of years. It began once I utilized for The Nice British Bake Off. I bought fairly far by means of the audition course of though I didn’t truly 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 wished to pursue it as a profession. So, over the subsequent 12 months I experimented with baking and some occasions and that bought 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 operating for four-and-a-half-years now. We began as a wholesale cake enterprise, however we needed to pivot sadly initially of the pandemic as a result of most of our wholesale clients needed to shut their doorways. We determined to ship our brownies, which have been our hottest product, by means of the submit in letterbox-sized packing containers and now hundreds of individuals ship them as presents, largely to household and buddies.

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 thought of getting a presence in London for 4 days was actually thrilling. Numerous my clients 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 suppose that footfall is de facto excessive on the street, nevertheless it’s been tougher than I believed to get individuals to return in. Individuals are not too positive about what the concept is. We’ve discovered probably the most profitable factor to do is to offer tasters on the street and level individuals in the direction of the store. Individuals are fairly reticent about strolling into a store after 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?

You must go for it, however you want a straightforward retail-able product, and you have to really feel that the patrons on Oxford Road are your sort of buyer. It is advisable have put some thought into advertising and marketing and PR. We laid some groundwork by performing some 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 clients for every week to return and see us. Doing that groundwork is de facto 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 profitable 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 profitable the Sage pop-up store competitors has meant for her on-line child tools subscription enterprise