My sister and I started Gingerbread Corner 4 years ago and through the years it definitely has taught us a lot of lessons which I am grateful for and hope to learn some more as we continue on this journey.

Here are the top 3 things that I have learnt from starting a cookie business.

1. Set realistic expectations

Okay, so when we had our very first market booked in, we were super excited and like most people we thought our product was pretty awesome. So we thought that we were going to be so popular that we would sell out at the market. We worked endlessly making over 200 bags of cookies just for that one particular market, we were very eager. But boy did we have a rude awakening when it was market day.

Firstly this was our very first market ever, so no one knew about Gingerbread Corner yet or what our cookies looked like or tasted like so we couldn’t draw in much of a crowd.

Secondly just because a market is on it doesn’t mean that there will be traffic and even if there is, it doesn’t mean that they will stop by your stall and buy your product.

Thirdly, because we were so focused on making the cookies, we didn’t think much about our stall setup and how our table would look like. So we ended up just laying all the cookies down on the table on one level, which didn’t look that appealing or attractive.

After that first market, we definitely made some changes.

2. Just because you like it, doesn’t mean others will

There have been a lot of cookie designs where we thought they were really nice and pretty and therefore they would definitely be a hit with our audience…but we were wrong on many occasions.

Everyone’s style does differ and you must pay attention to what your customers like and want. We found that our customers liked designs of characters that they could recognize, which is very understandable, so we try to decorate our cookies with more popular characters on them and have stopped doing the designs where no one really responded to them even though we quite liked them ourselves, but your customer does always come first.

3. As time goes on you will get better at your Craft

There is a great photo of our very first batch of cookies that we ever made which I love looking at because it makes me realize that we really have improved…a lot (the designs were pretty awful)!!

That’s the thing I love most about starting something new and that goes for most things in life, if you keep at it and practicing you do get better. I think that a lot of times we tend to give up before we have really given it a good try because it was hard or we feel like we are just not getting it.

But if you really love doing something, keep going and see where it can take you because I can guarantee that you will eventually master your craft and open up new doors for yourself.

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