(Small Business Superstar) Taking your business online!

This week’s Small Business Superstar is Caroline from Hunkington House Kitchen.A little bit about Caroline’s amazing business…Hunkington House Kitchen is based in Shrewsbury offering wedding cakes/sweet treats, and more recently online classes via Zoom for keen bakers. Caroline had to adapt her business after the pandemic affected her wedding cake business and has now started to offer online classes to those who want to bake!What one marketing thing made a difference to their business? Get online! Caroline has expanded her offering by giving her audience a chance to bake along with her via Zoom. Caroline designs and distributes kits and then joins keen bakers online to create their masterpieces. Classes so far have included Christmas Cake, Mince Pies and Christmas Cookies.What difference did it make to them and their business? Caroline has sold out two lots of Christmas Cake classes and sold out the Christmas Cookies class so has added a new date! The online classes have meant that Caroline can reach a much wider audience and be more accessible to those who are not in the local area. Not only has this been a huge boost for Caroline in terms of love and passion, but it has also meant her business has been able to survive this year.Where you can find CarolineWebsite: www.hunkingtonhousekitchen.co.uk/Facebook: @HunkingtonhouseInstagram: @Hunkingtonhousekitchen Transcript below Hello and welcome to this week's Thursday episode of the podcast. How the devil are you? I hope you're having a good week. So this week I have on the podcast, the very lovely Caroline from Hunkington House Kitchen. Caroline welcome to the podcast. Caroline: Hi Teresa. How are you? Teresa: I am good. Really good. I think I've just realized I've got lipstick on my, uh, on my face, but other than that, I'm good. So very professional here at, uh, Teresa Heath-Wareing Limited. Um, Caroline, please tell my audience who you are, what you do and how you got to doing the business that you do today. Caroline: Okay. So first of all, thank you so much for having me. I am so excited. Teresa: It's my pleasure. My pleasure. Caroline: So, um, I'm Caroline. I live on the outskirts of shoe spray and say, I'm very proud owner of Huntington House Kitchen. I started this business full-time last March. So March, 2019, after taking redundancy from a very high-level HR job. Uh, we moved to Hunkington house in 2018. And I've always got a vision of, um, doing classes and wanted to do wedding cakes. And a kitchen is just phenomenal. So, because I wanted to do, um, uh, classes and I wanted to, um, do more than just cakes. I wanted it to be Hunkington house kitchen, um, and just think it. It works on a side. I'm just absolutely loving it. Teresa: So did you, cause you said you came from HR, so were you good at baking? cooking? Was it like how, how did that, was it always a thing that you were going to do that? Or how did that come about? Caroline: I suppose it was a dream. If I'm totally honest. Loved, I've always loved baking. Um, if, uh, ever I had to go see anybody or go to work, it's always cupcakes. Just cupcakes are my thing. Um, but yeah, always spoke with my Nan. My mum used to do wedding catering when we were little. So I used to watch her. Um, my nephews will kill me for saying it, but they always used to make fairy cakes with me. Um, they're in their twenties now and I can't, they weren't doing that, but yeah, just absolutely loved it. But I've been for years being on classes of baked, you know, with people like John Whaite from the Bake Off. Um, I baked with him and I had to go back again cause I loved it so much, but I've been on loads and loads of classes, um, applied for bake-off and got through fine final 70 a few years ago. It was awesome. But yeah. And now I do this for a living I'm not allowed to apply anymore, even though I do think I'd be awesome. Yeah. Teresa: What happened? Just because it's your business? Caroline: Yeah. Yeah. Teresa: Like home bakers. Caroline: Yes. Yeah. But I've been on saying loads and loads of classes, but just self-taught I suppose. And I own an obscene amount of cookery books, so really, really do. Teresa: Feel like a guilty pleasure. I do love book. Caroline: Yeah, they do. Yeah, they are. Teresa: So you started off doing wedding cakes with the dream of wanting to do classes and the wedding cakes were going well. Caroline: Were again brilliantly. I was jus to have a fantastic year. This year, I had over 40 weddings booked, which was a very, very busy time. Um, but considering. So last, um, last year was my first full year doing it. Um, so yeah, it was supposed to, it's supposed to be such a, such a good year. And I know when, when lockdown started, I spent weeks crying. Oh, What on earth. What do I do? I invested so much into this and yeah, I've just, yeah, it was totally and utterly deflated, but also sad for all the people that weren't able to. Yeah, go ahead. So yeah, wedding cakes would go really, really well. Teresa: Yeah. And, and that's like, it's funny enough. Uh, when I interviewed Toria, we talked about the fact of when lockdown first, she got a bit depressed and I was like, but we're allowed to, we're allowed to go, Oh, my actual goodness, you know, this has happened. And literally there's nothing else I can do about it. I can't. These weddings are not going to go ahead. Also, even if they did, did go ahead, which they couldn't during locked down, but then after a locked down they could have been. They couldn't, they weren't the weddings that they were going to be. So no one was going to have a huge, massive three tier amazing wedding cake because they wouldn't have had that many guests at the wedding. So. At that point. What, what did you think you were going to do? What, what did you think was going to happen with the business? Caroline: Um, I had the dread that I would have to get another job, but say, I think I put so much into this and I went on a zoom training course. Um, and it was quite early on in lockdown and I think I was on a zoom training course with yourself, which is where I first met you. And I know you'd said to me, Oh, you should get yourself online. And I wasn't, I wasn't ready. I just was absolutely petrified of trying to do anything on, on zoom. And then another lady who I'd met on a course said to me, "I heard you what you're saying?" Cause I'd introduced myself as a wedding cake designer with no weddings. And um, she said, "Would you do a cream tea for a baby shower?" And I said, well, I don't, but I can. Um, and I spent the whole summer making cream teas and I spent a lot of money on online marketing and being in lots of paid adverts in magazines, but it was the local community that found me and just kept me going. So I literally just worked and worked more doing cream teas at that point. And wasn't brave enough to do anything online. Really. Teresa: But you still find a business opportunity, which, you know, you've got to take your hat off to that. You've got to go. "I, I was doing this. And then I had to pivot a bit to, to find a new way." And you were busy and you were bringing in money and your name was almost getting out there more than because you would probably known in the wedding industry, but now suddenly a whole new audience are finding you. Caroline: Yeah, I'd say most of them were just, just up the road and say, even though I wasn't very competent on social media, I think at that point, um, it was the Facebook groups locally and people finding it in the recommendations. And I, in December, 2018, I'd advertised some classes that in the kitchen. So you would come and you would decorate a Christmas cake with me. And I had one person that came just one that's my old boss. Um, and I didn't appreciate back then and that no light contrast. Teresa: Yeah. Caroline: And it's. I, I just didn't get it. I thought, "Well, I've got a really, really good products." I'm Teresa: yeah. Caroline: Right I think nobody came. Um, but it's. It's say that the know like, and trust and people recommending. And I did a cream tea the other day for somebody that recommended me in June. So it is, you know, I, I get it now. I, I, it's not just spiel. I do. I get it. Teresa: Tell me, because obviously when we, when I set up this podcast, it was like, what was that one thing that you did? What was kind of the. The thing in marketing that you did that then ended up in a result...