If you’re as obsessed with cupcakes as we are, you’ll love this week’s Cupcake Baker of the Week. Jill Fontaine is the cupcake-obsessed mastermind behind the Stay Calm Cupcake Shop. Armed with a Kitchen Aid and a passion for baking, Jill started selling her sweets through Etsy in 2010. What started as a way to share her love of cupcakes and earn a little extra cash has flourished into a booming online shop and local catering endeavor. Read on about how she sets herself apart from the cupcake crowd. As an added bonus, Jill is offering an exclusive discount to her shop for our readers! Use the code TakeCake11 fOR 15% off at checkout.
Name: Jill Fontaine
Location: Daytona Beach, FL
Website: http://www.etsy.com/shop/StayCalmCupcake
- How did you get started making cupcakes?
I have loved baking from as far back as I can remember. My mom and I have the best memories of me sitting on the counter at age 4, helping her stir the brownie mix. I started baking on own when I was in middle school and by high school I was the go-to girl for sweets.
I started baking cupcakes more seriously about a year and a half ago. I realized cupcakes were the perfect way to fulfill my passion for baking along with my desire to be creative. Each cupcake is like a little piece of art, and I love that!
- What lead you to open your own business?
Essentially, I knew that I would be unhappy working behind a desk for someone else my whole life. I also knew that if I didn’t work for someone else for at least a little bit, I wouldn’t be able to afford to have my own business. I had to be smart about it. So, after I graduated college I accepted a position as Asst. Marketing Director at a local University. It was then that I was able to put some time and money into creating my own brand and my own cupcake shop. Etsy gave me a wonderful venue to open my shop without having to quit my day job and open up a store-front right away.
I am an entrepreneur at heart, and nothing makes me happier than having my own business and watching it grow into something successful. It’s a very fulfilling experience.
- Any formal training?
Nope, I have no formal training. Unless you consider Martha Stewarts book, “A Guide to Cupcakes” professional training. As I said before, I grew up baking, so making cupcakes was an easy transition for me.
- Do you have a signature cupcake, or a personal favorite?
My all time favorite cupcake is a toasted coconut cupcake with buttercream frosting topped with coconut flakes and a cherry. Divine!! I don’t currently have a signature cupcake, but am in the process of creating a new line of signature flavors.
- How did you come about using Etsy as a method of selling?
I wanted to be able to keep my day job and still sell cupcakes. Etsy was the perfect way to do both. A friend told me about Etsy and I started looking into it right away. It took me about 3 months to decide that I was actually going to do it. It was pretty nerve racking at first. I just kept thinking “This is silly, who is going to buy cupcakes online from girl who doesn’t even have a bakery yet”. To my surprise though, people liked my shop and were interested in my product! What a relief!
Opening my Etsy was one of the best decisions I could have made. I have met so many great people who have helped me and my shop along the way. Because of Etsy I have a great foundation to open up a storefront shop. Etsy really helped me get my brand out there in a way that I could not have done on my own.
- Have you thought about opening a store?
I think about it every day! My ultimate goal is to own my own storefront shop. I opened my Etsy shop to pave the way for a real shop one day in the near future.
My online shop is continuing to grow daily, and my cupcake catering that I am doing locally has kept me steadily busy with orders. I feel so blessed to have come this far in such a short amount of time. My dreams of owning a cupcake truck and storefront shop seem more attainable now than ever. - What are the challenges to shipping?
Shipping can be a huge challenge. The key is to package your product so that it can’t get messed up in the mail. All of my cupcakes are wrapped in a plastic wrapping before they are placed inside a bakery box. This keeps them fresh during their trip to the customer’s home. I use plenty of pink packing peanut to make sure nothing moves around inside of the USPS box!
I ship all of my orders 2 day priority – this ensures that the cupcakes remain fresh and ready to eat upon arrival. I offer overnight shipping but most customers don’t want to pay the expensive overnight costs – and I don’t blame them!
I always use USPS Priority Mail Flat rate shipping. It is the most convenient way for me to set one price for all my customers, and actually is a lot cheaper than sending my cupcakes based on weight.
- Do you work with original recipes? How do you come up with those?
I take a lot of recipes that I find online and in cookbooks, and adapt them to make my own creations. There are some recipes though that I come up with on my own, entirely from scratch. If I have a flavor that I want to create and can’t find a similar recipe, I’ll just create my own recipe. That way I know the result will be exactly what I want.
- How do you market yourself?
Social Media is the absolute best marketing tool! I have a Stay Calm Cupcake twitter account and facebook page. I update my fans on sales, recipes, new items, and fun ideas daily. It’s the best way to keep your name fresh in the consumers mind – and the best part, it’s FREE
I also think it’s important to reach out to the entire blog community. I have a blog that is all about cupcakes. I don’t push my shop too hard, because I don’t want readers to feel like they are reading an advertisement every time I make a post. It’s important for me to cultivate relationships with my customers, and my blog really helps me do that. I also advertise my shop on some great blogs. It’s a relatively inexpensive way to market to a specific audience. I have found great success in blog advertising.
- What's the biggest challenge to running your own business?
The biggest challenge so far has been time. If there were 34 hours in the day, I would be set! It’s hard because I can’t quit my day job and sustain myself financially, so that means all of my Cupcake Shop stuff has to be done in the evenings. I don’t have a lot of free time, or sleep time. But that’s ok…we can sleep when we’re dead. Right?
- What advice do you wish someone would've told you?
Honestly? I wish someone would have told me that there will be days when it seems easier to give up then to keep pushing for your dreams. I just assumed that my passion for baking cupcakes would make this whole journey easy and fun. The truth is, I’m having to work hard for my dreams of owning a cupcake shop one day. And there are days when giving up really does seem like the easy way out. It takes a conscious effort to be successful in the cupcake world and I am more determined now, then ever, to see my dreams become reality.
- How did you come up with the idea to sell cupcake kits?
There is a lot of competition on Etsy – a lot of really amazing bakers and products. It’s so important for me to work every day to make sure that my products are the ones being chosen. I had to sit down and really decide what was going to make my product different. What was going to make the customer buy my cupcakes instead of someone else’s? My answer was to create an experience for the customer. People don’t just want to buy something; they want to be part of the process. That’s why cupcake kits are so successful, because people are interacting with the product they purchased.
Cupcake kits include 6 unfrosted cupcakes, a piping bag of homemade frosting, and a bag of festive sprinkles. Just frost and decorate each cupcake and you are ready to enjoy them!
- Are there any products you're looking to add to your offerings in the future?
I really like the idea of cupcake pushpops. It’s such a fun and creative way of selling a cupcake. I am currently working on some different ways to package and ship them. I want to make sure that the cupcake push pops arrive to the customer as neatly as I packaged them. Hopefully they will be in my shop by Fall.
- Any cupcake horror stories?
Dora Cupcakes! I was asked to make Dora Cupcake for a little girls birthday. “No big deal, that sounds fun!” I thought. I was wrong, so wrong! My customer gave me a cut-out and a recipe from a Nickelodeon Website (my first mistake was agreeing to follow someone else’s recipe). Basically it was a vanilla cupcake with chocolate shaped hair, a piece of fruit roll up for the mouth, and white chocolate for the eyes. It was a disaster! The chocolate wouldn’t form, the fruit roll up didn’t look like a mouth, and the eyes looked like crazy eyes. These cupcakes looked nothing like Dora. I did the best I could, boxed them up, and left for delivery. I live in Florida – its hot – it’s humid. So by the time I got there, the chocolate hair had fallen off or melted on every single cupcake. Dora looked bald! I had no options, I apologized a million times and offered her money back. Somehow (I don’t know how) the little girl LOVED the cupcakes and I didn’t feel as bad. Moral of the story – no more character cupcakes for me!
Thanks, Jill! Stay tuned for the next Cupcake Baker of the Week. Leave us questions, feedback, and suggestions for future bakers in the comments below, or e-mail Jackie at cupcakestakethecake@gmail.com with the subject "Hey Jackie! Meet this Cupcake Baker!"
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