Special Sweets 

 

Andrea MacLeod is Canadian, met her Australian husband,
Greg, when they were both living in Germany, and they've now settled in Cookham. They have two children – a daughter who is nearly eight and a son who is five. Andrea has just started a new business called Special Sweets creating themed baking kits, and here she tells us all about it...

 

We make monthly, themed baking kits that have all the dry ingredients you need to bake up some lovely treats, along with the decorations to make them really special! We've tested it with several people who loved making them with their kids – partly because of the fun they had, and partly because of the simplicity of having everything there for you.

   My last job was when I lived in Germany, where I ran a company that provided business English training and cross-cultural communication for companies. I sold that off before we moved to the UK, when I was pregnant with my first child. 

   When my youngest started in Year One at school, my mind turned to working and I liked the idea of running my own business again. I've always enjoyed baking, and once I had the idea for Special Sweets, I ran with it. Within two weeks of coming up with the idea, I had a test panel set up and tester baking kits sent out to get feedback on them. I went to an industry exhibition and had the website up the same week!

   Despite my previous business being in a totally different industry, I do think it was great training for starting this one. Just knowing some of the basic steps that need to be done to run any business successfully was a help to getting off to a quick start. Other than that, I had to do some basic food hygiene training, and have taken ideas from a lifetime of cooking and baking! 

   I love the planning of the different recipes and ideas for each box, researching the ingredients and decorations. I also love seeing the photos people post of the results they've had with the baking kits. It makes me feel good to see people proud of what they've made with just some simple ingredients and instructions from me. 

   My favourite sweet treat is... ooh I don't know, that's tricky. I'm quite partial to them all, but if forced, would probably go for chocolate with raspberry filling. I have an allotment where I grow a lot of weeds, the occasional token vegetable, and a few raspberries! 

   I think the best and the worst things about having your own business are very much intertwined. Having all the responsibility for your own success or failure is great, until you have problems. Also, once business is running well, you can set it at the level you want to work at it. But until it's running well, you have to work very hard to get it there. So it's very much all integrated, both the good and the bad. I still think it's mainly good however!

 

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