San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
JOYCE TANG: THE BAKER REBORN
At the start of 2020, Bake Sum pastry box founder Joyce Tang was growing her wholesale business, formerly known as La Chinoiserie, which brought her delicate, Asianinspired treats to cafes across the Bay Area. She was also a coowner of Sunday Gather, a new social enterprise restaurant in the Bayview. But as with many others in the restaurant industry, Tang’s life came crashing down in March.
Here’s Tang in her own words:
How did 2020 not change me? It fundamentally shifted every single piece of my life. It’s been an extremely, extremely difficult year, but it’s also been one that has caused a lot of folks, myself included, to do a lot more introspection. Where do I want my life to be headed? How do I want my ideal business to be structured? How much time can I afford to spend with my family?
At the beginning of the year, I had just had my second child. I became a mother of two. I had a pretty vibrant, thriving wholesale business and a couple of business partnerships. We were on track to really jumpstart our growth, and we were hitting stores all over the Bay Area.
The wholesale business basically died overnight. Within a week or two, people stopped buying wholesale pastries. So I started Bake Sum, a brandnew business, and tried to get wholesale off the ground. I pitched most of the coffee shops in San Francisco and a lot of them in Oakland. It was extremely humbling to say I couldn’t land a single account at that time. No one could afford it, and no one was interested. That’s when I really felt like I got very close to rock bottom.
But from that challenge, I knew that the business model needed a change and we needed to try something different. At that point, we decided to go direct to consumer and start selling pastry boxes, presale only, to anybody who might want to pick up a box. It was a lot of trial and error. Eventually, people started getting really excited about it. Now we’re able to sell out most of our pastries before the end of the week, which is super exciting, and we’re able to build direct relationships with the customers. Some are saying we’re basically part of their family now and that this is a bright spot in their week. That’s been a huge, huge change from running a wholesale business and has been really meaningful to me and the team, knowing the work we’re doing is being appreciated.
This year has changed the way I’ve been building the business. I’m trying to be more thoughtful and conscious about the decisions I make. It’s no longer growth at all costs. I think sustainability is more of what I’m looking for from the employee perspective, for me as a founder and for business longevity. I didn’t realize how burnt out I was this past year until I sat down and was like, I don’t know if this is how I want to live the next 20 years. We only have two bake days a week now, and that’s really for my sanity and time for me to spend with my family. But I am prepping and working five or six days a week. That’s a big change for me in terms of how many hours I’d been commuting and working the previous year. I’ve cut back quite significantly.
In 2020, it can be so difficult to not focus on the all the things we lost and all the difficulties everyone has had to overcome. The only way I’ve pulled myself out of the darker times is focusing on gratitude. It has been a very, very difficult year for me personally, but I’ve come out a little stronger, a little smarter and extremely grateful for the things I do have in my life.