Second Annual “Week of Engagement” Day 2 – Main Street

This is our second annual “week of engagement” and our Day 2 discussion is with Angela Luca, owner of Amalu Bakery and Confections. Her specialty is old school, comfort baked goods including breakfast breads, cookies and cakes. She’s in the middle of a rebrand so if you see Busy Bee, that’s Amalu!

Tag your favorite gym, florist, bike shop, garden center, hardware store, daycare, groomer, hair stylist, jeweler, yoga studio on your socials and use #engagesmall so we can follow along.

Find out everything about Amalu Bakery and Confections on Facebook and Instagram.

Transcript

Brandan: Hey, this is Brandan Baki from Engage Small. So today is day two of our week of engagement and if you don’t know what that is, we’re just tagging small businesses and using the #engagesmall on social media. If you wanna learn more you can go to engagesmall.com. But today is mainstream, and the idea is that it’s people with small businesses who have storefronts so bike a shop, a yoga studio, a vintage store, all kinds of stuff. And it’s a pretty big catch all too and some people don’t really qualify like a CPA, even though they could have a storefront, technically, we would actually include them tomorrow which is our service but there’s also a debate for bakers. So a bakery would have a storefront. I typically kind of think of a baker as maybe someone in the creative, but, you know, a lot of people are gonna be able to fit into a lot of different categories. And to kinda break the mold, we do have a baker today. So we’re going to be talking with Angela Luca from Amalu Bakery and Confections. Hey Angela, how are you doing today?

Angela: Hi, great, thank you.

Brandan: Thank you so much for doing this. So, let’s just start with the basics. What is Amalu? Am I saying that right? Amalu?

Angela: Yes, Amalu.

Brandan: Okay, great.

Angela: It’s a combination of my mid-name which is a Amotto and Luca which is my married name.

Brandan: Okay, nice.

Angela: So when I first started baking, I just picked a name out of the hat just to get something on paper. And now that I’m expanding and doing a lot better, I just figured I’d make it more personal.

Brandan: That’s good, yeah. So what all do you create? So it’s bakery and confections. So what kind of stuff do you make?

Angela: So my most popular items are my breakfast spreads. I do zucchini, banana night, apple, caramel apple. I do seasonal breads, like blueberries and strawberries. Whatever’s in season at the time. I also have a line of the biscotti that I make. And it’s not your traditional hard toast type biscotti, it’s more of a softer cookie type of biscotti. So a little bit different than what everybody else sells. I’ve also gotten into making some fudge so like cookies and cream and. I’m sorry.

Brandan: It’s okay, don’t worry about it.

Angela: Yeah, I’m a mom too. Cookies and cream and peanut butter and lemon. So I’m just kinda branching out starting to do some more traditional old school, like I should’ve call it comfort baked goods that not a lot of people are offering out there.

Brandan: Nice. So how did you get started? Where did this all kinda come from for you to start your own thing?

Angela: So as I was growing up, I’ve got a Sicilian, had a Sicilian grandmother that I always baked with and helped out especially, around Christmas time with the traditional Italian cookies. And then my son who’s now 16 was diagnosed with a peanut allergy around the time he was a year old. So I felt really bad. It was not as common as it is today and I didn’t want him to suffer being singled out in class and not having the same thing everybody else did. So I took classes and I learned how to decorate cakes. And then I was talking to a friend who was doing some craft shows with her pumpkin rolls and I just started offering the biscotties and picked up a cup of coffee houses and just went from there.

Brandan: That’s awesome. So where can people find your stuff? Like a director. Go ahead, sorry.

Angela: Oh, no problem. In the summertime, my biggest customer is Pickering Hill and they’re right over on Detroit road in Avon across on Avon Commons, I sell all my breakfast breads there. I also do some specialized things like, you know, I’ll put brownies in. Whatever they let me put in, I try to stock there. And last year was a record setting year. So I think I kind of benefited from COVID a little bit with it being an outside market. I’m also selling the breads in the Martin’s Delis. There’s three locations. And I’ve also gotten into a partnership with one of my friends who is an Avon resident, used to have a store right next to Pickering but opened her own, it’s called Maison and I’ve put a bakery case in there. And every Saturday we have baked goods in there and I have it all stocked up.

Brandan: That’s fantastic. So, I mean, it feels like it would be a success to be in one place and you’re in several which is really a big deal. So you’re very busy, I imagine.

Angela: Yes. Especially in the summertime. And I also take orders for a custom cookie trays at Christmas time and we offer specials for Valentine’s day. We just had a very successful Mother’s Day promotion.

Brandan: Awesome.

Angela: So it’s been amazing. A fun ride.

Brandan: Good for you. So as far as the business side of it all goes, what do you kind of, you know, I feel like every small business person kind of just moves forward best they can, learns along the way. So what kind of stuff do you know now that you wish you knew when you started this business?

Angela: Well, I wish I knew back then to have a little bit more confidence in myself because that’s really helped me move to the next level. I also think finding the resources available to you like the Small Business Development Center at community college. I just take a small business course there, that was absolutely huge. And I didn’t even think to look there as a resource and word-of-mouth, making friends and telling them what you do.

Brandan: Yeah. Yeah, that’s great. It’s this there’s a community out there especially, for small businesses, there’s this a lot of these free resources and just people who are really trying to support you best they can because small businesses is strange ’cause the more you succeed, the more your community succeeds, really. So it’s definitely this, we all kind of want everyone to do really well because it helps us selfishly, you know, it’s a good thing.

Angela: Absolutely.

Brandan: Yeah, it’s great. Yeah, there’s tons of resources. That’s really awesome. So how do you engage with people online? Is there any way that you find that you can get business from social media or reaching out to people?

Angela: Absolutely, I use Facebook and Instagram all the time. My name used to be Busy Bee, I’m in the process of changing it over to Amalu. So right now, you can find me @busybee.avonlake on Facebook but I’m in the process of changing everything to Amalu. Just wanna make sure people can still find me. But hosting events, you know, doing Facebook live videos has been huge. This store, Maison that I’m in now with the bakery case which just featured on New Day Cleveland which brought a lot of people in.

Brandan: That’s cool.

Angela: Yeah, that was so huge. But word-of-mouth too is absolutely invaluable.

Brandan: Yeah, definitely.

Angela: Now I talk to people and they said, “I know you do that. I have this coming up or that coming up, can you help me?”

Brandan: Yeah, it’s funny. And you can be a part of these small, you know, Facebook groups and you just see the same questions being posted over and over again, you know. Does anybody know a good electrician? Does anyone know a good whatever? And it’s, you just kinda like see these things and you’re like, you just kinda go through this circle of like, everyone’s always looking for this stuff, how do people not know? And it’s just, they don’t know it just because they don’t happen to hear that someone next door does that thing. So yeah, the more we talk and share, the better all of our businesses are gonna be for sure.

Angela: Oh, for sure. And you know, this happens a lot of, I don’t know I know somebody who does know and can put you in touch with that. So word-of-mouth and talking is huge.

Brandan: Definitely. So what? You’re very busy. You have children. What do you like to do that has nothing to do with baking?

Angela: Well, I just took up golf last year and that has been amazing, a good stress reliever for me when I can make the time for it.

Brandan: Last year was a good year to start golfing.

Angela: It was. And, you know, I got started with the networking golf league.

Brandan: That’s cool.

Angela: So double benefit. You can hold the word and play golf at the same time. And you know, my kids are very active in gymnastics and lacrosse so that takes up a lot of time.

Brandan: Thank you so much. I really appreciate taking the time to do this and good luck with everything.

Angela: Thank you so very much.

Brandan: Thank you for watching that interview. If you wanna learn more, you can click through the links to find Amalu and you can also find us on Facebook and Instagram @engagesmall. And if you want to help out in any way, you would like your business to be featured, you wanna ask us a question, you want to guest post on our blog, you can do all of those things at our website, engagesmall.com. We’re just here to support small businesses any way we can. So please continue to tag small businesses and use the #engagesmall so we can see all the growth and all the interactions out there. And we really appreciate everything, all the support that everyone’s done yesterday and appreciate your help today and we’ve still got three more days to go after today. So thank you again.