The smell of baked goods fills the air in the busy classroom as cookies, cupcakes, and even macaroons leave their beautiful aurora trickling in the room. Students started turning their heads with their eyes glued on to one figure- Victoria Thompson. She walked into the room with a handful of home baked goodies. Everyone surrounded Victoria and waited for her to unravel her mysterious box. She opened her box and the aurora leaked through and smiles started to appear on everyone’s faces.
Victoria Thompson is a current Junior at Francis Lewis High school and a young entrepreneur that is focused on the baking business world. She bakes home baked goods for her friends and to sell on her online business. But how did she start this journey? Well, let’s dive into the sweetness of her story.
“Well, my grandmother loved to bake as well, so ever since I was younger I used to help her out in the kitchen,” Thompson said. “When I was nine years old, I made my first actual cake by myself. Then in 2021, that was the pandemic, and I got bored at home. So I was like, why not just turn something I love into a business?”
From a sweet dream made into reality, she opened her online business. Her love for baking never stopped at one dish and shared her love for baking through all kinds of baked delicious goods.
“I sell cookies, cakes, donuts, macaroons, brownies and a lot of other things,” Thompson said. “I also change the website depending on the holiday. For example, oh, for Easter I’m making another page on the website so that it’s like Easter themed good baked foods. So it’d be like peeps, marshmallows, and egg kind of stuff. My sales are kind of good, I don’t get that many sales as I did the first year. The first year I made about 701 dollars. From then on it’s kind of just been dwindling, like two, two to four orders a month.”
Over the course of a few years, Thompson has had many customers, purchasing numerous cookies and sweet treats to fill up their sweet tooth craving.
“After ordering multiple treats from Vicky’s bakery, choosing just one as a favorite is much easier said than done,” Junior Ebony Stapleton said. “However, I must admit to my current obsession with the blueberry macaroons, which I often think about at random times of the day. There are, as my mother said when I offered her one to try, ‘finger licking good’. The macaroons have the perfect texture, with elements of sweet home made fruit jam, creamy frosting, and the crunchy, light cookies.”
In addition to Stapleton’s sweet treat favorites, she mentions how excellent the service has been, explaining Thompson’s kindness and sweet service she provides to all of her valuable customers.
“Based on my personal experience, Vicky’s Bakery has not only an excellent variety, it offers high quality treats,” Stapleton said. “I’ve ordered the lemon cupcakes, blue meringue cookies, the strawberry and blueberry macaroons and loved each single one of them. The owner is not only kind, she is compassionate and generous, offering an additional complementary cupcake after a family member of mine passed away a few days after I placed my order.”
Though Thompson has had many customers that have ordered from her business, she would never forget the feeling of her very first order she received.
“I was very excited,” Thompson mentioned. “Very excited because it felt so official. Like I had the website, I had an actual order that meant someone wanted to apply. So I was like, this is a good idea because people are actually wanting to buy stuff I’m making.”
Despite her young enthusiasm, she still pursued on with her dream of owning her own bakery. She broke through those challenges to pursue her impossible dream.
“It was easy to get started,” Thompson said. “But it was hard to face a lot of doubts’ cause a lot of people were like, ‘oh, you can’t own a bakery when you’re 13, that would not work.’ But then I was just like, who’s deciding my future besides me? So it’s kind of like I have to prove everyone else wrong and see if I can prove myself wrong.”
From a small online bakery, to store front, Thompson’s dreams of possible future pathways this bakery could lead her with.
“I’ve wanted to own a bakery for years now, so as soon as I am close to college,” Thompson remarked. “Having done a baking internship to learn more about the craft and about learning the bakery, I will actually open my own bakery and bookshop. So it’ll be a bakery and then a small room that you can read books in that’s very cozy and has some quiet music playing.”
With Thompson’s ambitious dreams of opening a store front, what would drag customers into her bakery in the first place? With her extra care and responsibility when baking numerous orders, Thompson explained it’s not just her delicious taste her cakes and cookies give to customers to keep them coming, but the feeling they make you feel inside.
“So my bakery has a very wide range of things to eat,” Thompson explained. “We can accommodate anything, like on the order form you’ll see if you have any allergies, and if you do, I can change stuff and substitute stuff to match and make sure that you do not die, because that’s the main thing we pride ourselves on. The main thing about my bakery is it allows you to relax and eat stuff from your childhood, which is why we also sell peanut butter cookies, because my grandpa used to eat those when he was younger, so they just remind him of his childhood.”
Handling a bakery and a high school life is no easy task. Although Thompson hurdled such a difficult task, she managed to push through and create her bakery successfully.
“I have an immense amount of appreciation for Victoria as starting a big project outside of school is very hard for people these days, especially high schoolers,” Sophomore Robyn Scarlet said. “With her own creative spin on all of her orders, Victoria explains how it’s truly a delightful experience baking and just having fun in the kitchen! Baking allows her to experiment with new ingredients and test out fun baking ideas.”
With the support of her friends, Thompson has managed to handle the baking world with her social life and academics as a high school student at Francis Lewis.
“When I first heard about Victoria’s bakery I was more than impressed and proud of my colleague for diving into her entrepreneurial spirit with such success and creativity,” Stapleton. “I hope to see more from her and of course continue in the future, which I will be more than glad to support.”
With her own creative spin on all of her orders, Thompson explains how it’s truly a delightful experience baking and just having fun in the kitchen! Baking allows her to experiment with new ingredients and test out fun baking ideas.
“Vicky’s bakery is a way to make you feel more creative,” Thompson mentioned. “So like on my site, I’m gonna add it today, it’ll be wacky baked, which is like tie dye macaroons. So wacky bakes would just be stuff like French fry cookies, cookies that you can paint and tie dye macaroons, which are just normal macaroons with more color added to the top.”
Life is very similar to baking. You need the right ingredients, environment, and materials to bake delicious treats. Just to keep baking to find the right recipe in life.
“Well, the first cake I made was a box cake,” Thompson said. “But the second time I actually tried to make it from scratch and I mixed up the salt and the sugar. So I wasn’t that good of a first experience. But every time after that I kind of got better and realized what mistakes I was making and learned how to fix those as well.”
Visit Vicky’s Bakery by copying and pasting this link to support her wonderful business! https://vickysbakery21.wixsite.com/june2021
Additional thanks to Victoria Thompson for the pictures and amazing treats baked for this article!
