Today we’d like to introduce you to Sharon Su.
Hi Sharon, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I’ve been baking at home since I was a teenager but didn’t sell anything until 2011 when I signed up for an event that was brand new at the time called Thursdays on First. They close off First Avenue downtown and it’s filled with food and craft vendors and stages for live music. Being my first venture, I didn’t really have a focused menu so I just had a hodgepodge of things that I liked to bake – I sold cupcake sized pies, chiffon cake slices, and macarons. It was a great event to get my feet wet into baking as a business.
After that, I decided to attend a 6-week cake decorating program in Toronto at Bonnie Gordon College of Confectionary Arts, which unfortunately is now closed. I look back on that time really fondly because Toronto is a fun city in the summer and I ended up learning a lot of skills that came in handy for doing wedding cakes for my friends.
I thought that decorating cakes would be my main focus, but I ended up taking classes over the years that shifted my interest. In 2013, I took a sourdough baking class at the North House Folk School in Grand Marais. I’d never been to the North Shore and the class really hooked me. The school has a big huge wood fired oven that we baked our bread in and it also sparked my interest in wood fired ovens. I also took a weekend pastry class at the French Pastry School in Chicago. I think I just love learning, especially when I get to visit an interesting city.
Once I picked up all these skills, I applied to be at the farmers market in town and started out baking only macarons but have since expanded my menu to incorporate all the things I’ve learned over the years. Now I do scones, croissants, and sourdough bread and very occasionally macarons. The farmers market has really been the perfect home for me and I love being there.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
When I first started, there was a basic “pickle” law in Minnesota that only allowed me to sell at community events. I tried finding commercial kitchen space in town that would be willing to rent to me, but was unsuccessful. I started thinking that maybe I should start an incubator kitchen for myself and others in the same situation, though I didn’t know how to go about it.
I didn’t know this at the time but others in my situation were lobbying for Minnesota to institute a cottage food law and in 2015 they successfully passed one. I’m really grateful that they paved the way for a thriving cottage food community to spring up in the state. They’ve continued to push for improvements to the law and just last year, they were able to get the sales cap, which was previously $18,000 a year, on cottage food producers raised so that we can make a living out of it if we want.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I make everything from scratch and try to source locally when I can. For croissants, I mix the dough, I form the butter sheets, I sheet the dough and I cut and shape the dough. There aren’t any shortcuts taken or pre-bought anything. It’s a labor of love and I think my customers know and appreciate that when they have one of my pastries or loaves of bread.
Locally sourcing has been key especially during the pandemic. I don’t have an account with any big suppliers so I was affected when there wasn’t any flour to be found on the grocery store shelves in March 2020. I had been using some flour from Baker’s Field Flour in Minneapolis, but I started exclusively using them and haven’t looked back. They mill wheat from organic farmers in Minnesota and North Dakota and their values really align with mine.
I sell at the Rochester farmers market and have a pre-order system that opens on Sunday mornings and closes on Wednesday evenings for pick up on Saturday mornings. Closing orders on Wednesdays really helps me plan out quantities to make because I always try to make some product for walk ups and also I have a full time job outside of baking as a software engineer. Balancing those two things can be difficult, but I make it work because I love baking and I also love where I’m at in my software engineering career.
Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
I’ve learned that not every customer is my customer and that’s alright. When I started out, I severely underpriced myself (I was selling a macaron for 75 cents!) and still got a few comments that things were too expensive. As I see my products as reflections of myself, I was really hurt every time it happened but I finally saw that I was selling myself short. Now, I just make the best product I can and try to get it in front of people who care that I’m trying to make the best product I can.
Contact Info:
- Email: sharon@persimmonbakeshop.com
- Website: http://www.persimmonbakeshop.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/persimmonbakeshop/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/persimmonbakeshop
Image Credits
Sharon Su
