How Cinnamom Bakery Became a National Sensation
A Recipe for Entrepreneurial Triumph
Name: Rebecca Nagy, Owner
Company: Cinnamom Bakery, LLC Other Founders: Craig Nagy (Husband)
Year Founded: 2013
Employees: 12-14
Website: www.cinnamombakery.com
Introduction
Hello, I am Rebecca Nagy, Owner of Cinnamom Bakery, LLC. I started baking cinnamon rolls for my family and friends using my mom's original recipe. For years people would tell me I needed to start a cinnamon roll business, as mine were the best in the world. After happily retiring from my nursing career, in 2013, I finally listened to everyone’s plea and officially opened the first CinnaMom location in Lapeer, Michigan. Over the years, CinnaMom has expanded, opening a location in Grand Blanc, Michigan, and another at the Flint Farmer's Market. Additionally, we purchased our own building on a busy intersection in Flint, Michigan, with room to expand our shipping business and added a drive-thru for customer convenience. CinnaMom is on a Roll!
The Inspiration Behind Cinnamom Bakery
My husband and I were on vacation and as I was strolling down the Hollywood Beach boardwalk visiting quaint little shops by the ocean, I thought about how shops were offering so many different toppings and choices for icecream and for cupcakes, but nobody had ever offered choices for cinnamon rolls. Cinnamon rolls were my absolute favorite food. My 87 year-old mom was known for her homemade cinnamon rolls and we use her recipe to this day.
From Idea to Reality
I determined that I would do as much of the work myself getting started and avoid high startup costs. I registered for an LLC immediately upon our return to Michigan, created my own Weebly (inexpensive) website using my own photos taken with my cell phone. I had a vision from the get-go of selling online and shipping products all over the United States. I decided up front that I did not want to be a bakery that offered different pastries, but instead I wanted to concentrate on one thing, cinnamon rolls, and make the best tasting, quality cinnamon rolls with the best choices of toppings that could be found anywhere.
We rented a small 600 s.f. storefront right on a main road, and worked with the Department of Agriculture and the City to get ready for opening. We purchased used commercial equipment, researched the best options to order ingredients, worked on our menu, had my daughter-in-law create a logo for our website, signage and menu flyers.
I spent hours and hours doing market research from the very beginning. What were other successful companies doing? What could we do better? What is working? What is not working? We asked questions and got advice from many friends and relatives.
We did all the baking and waiting on customers ourselves. Our daughter and grandchildren helped as well as needed.
Attracting Customers
From the beginning, we advertised a lot on Facebook and early on we started selling our products at the Davison Market and then at the Flint Farmers Market, which helped the brand to be noticed. We built up a customer email list from using the Square POS system and also from our website orders. We offered specials. We optimized ads on Facebook. We listed our products on Amazon and got noticed there and received orders. We paid a company to do search engine optimization and became the 1st company that showed up if "order cinnamon rolls" was googled. Less than a year after we opened we were contacted with an opportunity to have our products featured on QVC. Eventually when we moved to a new larger place our products were featured on QVC. We ended up selling our products on Zulily. We got a trademark for "CinnAmazing" and started our CinnAmazing Rolls by Cinnamom store on Amazon. We are on Walmart.com, epallet.com, have cloud retail virtual stores and dashmart virtual stores. Just last week we were featured nationwide on Good Morning America. By far the growth has taken place by keeping the quality up and word of mouth, along with facebook advertising and marketing emails, and recently square marketing text campaigns.
Challenges Along the Way
The biggest challenges we faced were not having enough time in the day to do everything we needed to do. When we were very small we didn't have enough income to hire a lot of employees and were doing everything ourselves. I think keeping competent, quality employees and balancing payroll are some of the biggest challenges. Having family that helps is very much appreciated. The biggest challenge = exhaustion :)
Biggest Costs
Biggest costs in the beginning were the used commercial equipment and all of the initial expenses of startup; i.e. rent, paper products, ingredients, computer, printer, square POS system, phones, bakery display case, you name it. A lot of the money goes out up front before taking in any money at all.
Measured Success
We have been in business for over 10 years and it has been a gradual journey. I was relatively conservative with expenditures. I tried to spend just enough so we could make progress, but not too much so we wouldn't end up going belly up like 90% of small startup businesses do within the first 3 years. Slow and steady is my game and it has worked for us. If I would have taken a few more risks, we would have grown much faster and maybe I should have. We have tripled our business within the last 3 years. Also, income has shifted from brick and mortar sales to a bigger percentage of online sales. Ecommerce went crazy because of Covid and it seems people learned new habits of ordering online and it may have been a permanent change rather than a trend. Fun fact: we were in the process of creating a 10 minute video requested by Shark Tank when Covid hit my son who was doing it for us and we almost lost him to Covid. We have never revisited it, but maybe we should pursue it.
The Vision for Cinnamom Bakery
We have always shipped orders online, but recently we are shipping more full pallet orders for wholesale and also virtual locations. It is easier, for instance, for a bakery in downtown New York City to order gourmet cinnamon rolls by the pallet from me, than to make them in house since their space is limited. They may make some things and outsource others. We have always been a manufacturing and shipping fulfillment center but I envision we will become more of a major baking and manufacturing business/shipping fulfillment center as we will need to handle more orders and automate our process more. We plan to keep the brick and mortar bakery/coffee shop open, but will focus more and more on making sure everyone in the United States has access to them. We are also looking into exporting to Canada in the near future. I envision that our business will double within the next couple of years at the current rate of growth.
Guiding Principles for Entrepreneurial Success
Choose one thing that you do well or one item that you know is "the big one." Stick with it and don't lose sight of your original vision. Be the best at what you do and word of mouth will help do the rest. Your product must speak for itself. People are picky. They have choices. Your product must stand out from the rest.
Don't overstock or overbuy or take risks that can put you at risk in the beginning. I used my own money and credit cards to start, but I always made sure that there was a reasonable chance that I would at least break even. Take a step forward. Stay still for a moment. Then proceed. Don't be afraid to take some risks along the way, but they should be well-calculated risks.