Opinion | Accidentally turning a quarantine coping mechanism into a small business

Patty Martinez, senior screenwriting major

I’ve always been a baker. I got a hot pink KitchenAid mixer for my 12th birthday, and it’s what I’ve used to bake ever since. I’ve made brownies, multi-layer cakes, cookies and more. I called my baked goods “bakestries” (a combination of baked goods and pastries) because it just made sense to little Patty, and that name stuck. 

As I got older, I had less and less time to experiment in the kitchen. Then March rolled around and suddenly I had nothing but time. Along with everyone else, I started baking bread when I could actually find yeast at the store. I was cooking new recipes and baking old favorites to fill the time. 

I thought to myself, “What if I started selling this stuff?” In May, I made an Instagram to save the handle I had in mind, bakestriesbypatty, but the idea dissipated just about as quickly as it came to me. The Instagram page just sat there. Nevertheless, I kept baking as I delivered the goodies to my and my boyfriend’s family. Then, summer came around, and it was really just too hot to be using the oven. 

The season flew by and all of a sudden we were weeks into the fall semester. With a full course load, working remotely, trying to secure an internship and still navigating a pandemic, I needed an extra “creative” outlet. I broke out the KitchenAid again. 

Once it was pumpkin season, I was stress baking a recipe every Thursday: pumpkin bread, pumpkin cinnamon rolls, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin cupcakes. It was the perfect escape from my laptop. Then, when I was done, I’d post pictures of the final product on Twitter and Instagram, and a couple people would like it or tell me how yummy the pastries looked. I went back to the idea of selling baked goods, tweeting to my 40 followers about it, and I was ready to turn these thoughts into a reality.

Six hours later, I created a logo in Adobe InDesign, and I updated the Instagram account. I was really going to do this. I immediately got to work on my menu. Then, my mom started to hit me with all of these questions – “Who’s your target audience?” or “What’s the cost breakdown?” – and I realized I was actually starting a business. 

The thought had never crossed my mind. I just wanted to share the things I was baking with people, but I knew that as a college student in a pandemic, I couldn’t just be paying for Ghirardelli chocolate chips and King Arthur Flour out of pocket on a weekly basis. I also knew that if I was going to be charging for these bakestries, I wanted to give back in some way. 

I came up with the idea to donate 10% of every order to Mutual Aid Network Los Angeles, an organization composed of various grassroots organizations, volunteers and movements, which came about to provide material support to Angelenos in response to the COVID-19 public health crisis. They provide groceries, supplies and other community support services like informing people of their rights as tenants. I’m really proud to say that I’m over halfway to my donation goal for the month of November. 

I honestly didn’t think anyone would order the first week, but they did. Then the next week, more people did, and so on and so forth. To be honest, I don’t know how long this will last, but I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself. I told my mom that I don’t want to think about it as a business, because then I might hate it. 

For now, it’s something I genuinely love doing. I’m open to keeping at it for the long haul, but I’m just taking it one week at a time. Only time will tell where it goes from here.