This is more about what caused the bakery to happen in the first place.
Or, what happens between “what do you think if I opened a bakery” to “we signed the lease” and now “we’re opening soon.”
For years, Ann has been baking cookies and cupcakes for friends, many of them involved in the collector car hobby. In fact, if I’ve attended a classic car event in the last 10 years, I usually had a suitcase filled with Ann’s cookies and cupcakes.
People across the globe kept telling me that Ann was wasting her time as a senior marketing person at a Fortune 5 company and should open a bakery. It got to the point where people started requesting specific cookies. In one case, I was told that if I wanted to judge at a concours event, I had better bring her cookies.
It all came to a head when Ann’s boss, after tasting her new peanut butter cookies, told her she should open a bakery. Around the same time, the local cupcake bakery had just announced they were closing, and that the space and equipment were available.
She called me from her office in Philadelphia and asked me to get over to the bakery and find out what the deal was.
I drove over pretty quickly, spoke to the owner, and got the sense right away that they were serious and interested in finding someone to take over the space.
That weekend, Ann was back in town from Philadelphia, and we met with the owner and talked through the details.
The rest of the weekend was a lot of back and forth between the two of us. Talking through the idea, what it would take, and whether we actually wanted to do this.
At some point, we decided to go for it.
In her one-on-one with her boss the following week, she told him, “Remember that bakery you told me to do? Well, I’m doing it.”
That was December of 2025, and her last month as a healthcare marketer.
Now she was a bakery owner.
And there was still a lot left to do.
