Today we’d like to introduce you to Courtney Nguyen.
Hi Courtney, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
My baking journey started from just following my mom around in the kitchen when I was little and helping her prep Thanksgiving dinners. I always loved the praise I received whenever someone would tell me they loved any of my cooking or baking. That slowly grew into cooking and baking for my friends in college and then eventually into a way to pay bills when I could not find a job right after graduating.
Eventually, after job-hopping for a little while, I realized that it was hard for me to want to work for someone else. I quickly realized that while I was spending more than half of my days building someone else’s dream, I could have been building mine and investing into my future and family. COVID was a scary time for most but my small cottage bakery continued to grow and thrive. With the support of my community, I left my job in the health care world on June 15, 2021, and have been working full steam ahead every since. Even though I’m able to dedicate 100% of my time to baking now, I still very much work the very early morning hours into the wee hours of the night but, for me, as long as I’m not having to drive to an office every day I am okay with that!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Some of the challenges that come from being a cottage bakery include the limited space and limited resources. While I would love to do bigger and more grand cakes, there’s really only so much that a residential oven and residential refrigerator can do. I am very much looking forward to the day where we can have a massive commercial oven and multiple refrigerators.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
We are a cottage bakery and we can do anything from wedding cakes to a baby’s first smash cake. We are most known for our monogram letter cakes since we do them in two different styles. One style is cutting out letters and numbers out of a sponge cake and frosting with the most silky smooth frosting you’ve ever had. The second is our monogram letter cupcake boxes filled with cupcakes, candies, macarons, and fresh flowers.
Can you talk about how you think about risk?
The biggest risk was leaving my full-time stable health care job in pursuit of my own dreams and goals. After spending so much time and money pursuing a double degree at Baylor and only working for about 2.5 years out of college, I decided to throw all that away and pursue baking full time. Call me crazy, call me a risk-taker, whatever you want but at least I will go to bed knowing that I have done everything I could that day for my business.
Contact Info:
- Email: hello@theflourpetalbakery.com
- Website: theflourpetalbakery.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/theflourpetalbakery
- Facebook: facebook.com/theflourpetalbakery
