The My name's My name's Athena, and I started my home bakery business during the summer of 2020.

I was furloughed from my job, and the boredom was killing me, so I took up baking as a way of keeping

myself occupied. It was definitely a way of managing stress, too, because I always made way too much for one person.

But then delivering baked goods to family and friends always made for a great excuse to get out and stretch my legs.

Whenever they gave me compliments on the things I delivered, I figured they were just being kind and showing gratitude.

But when one friend told me that I could potentially earn money by turning my baking into a

lockdown side hustle, I got to thinking.

And at the time, the kitchen in my apartment was tiny, with a counter barely wide enough

for a cutting board, but I made it work.

I set up a few social media profiles, uploaded a dozen photos of my best brownies,

blondies, and pies, and then asked the right people to share my page for the maximum audience.

Part of me believed that there was no way that it would take off,

not with all the super fast delivery services that people could use with just a few taps on their phone.

But I was wrong, majorly wrong, and I discovered that in a world of faceless online middlemen

offering discounted merchandise made half the world away, there was a huge demand for locally

baked bread, cakes, pies, and pastries. The first week was slow, but promising,

and the easy scheduling helped me figure out the best methods of running my kitchen.

But then over the week that followed, word of mouth and grassroots advertising resulted

in my orders doubling, then tripling, then almost quadrupling over the course of

eight very productive days. And by week three, I was having to place potential customers on a

waiting list because my whole schedule was filled with either prep, proofing, or baking.

And I'd gone from bored out of my mind to barely having a minute to myself.

...