Bob the Baker Boy isn’t your typical cake store. If you happen to took a fast look via their catalogue, you’d doubtless bump into among the most uncommon but undeniably artistic truffles.

From bubble tea truffles you may really drink, to 3D-sculpted on the spot ramen truffles, and even a severed fish head cake—you title it, they most likely would have finished it.

They’ve additionally most lately made headlines for his or her Labubu truffles, which had blind packing containers saved within them.

They’ve loads of normal-looking truffles as properly, however they’re finest identified for his or her customized creations, which, admittedly, could be fairly dear, with some costing over S$1,000.

That mentioned, most of their truffles hover across the S$150 to S$300 vary, which I personally suppose is properly price it, particularly contemplating the craftsmanship and complex designs that go into every creation.

Behind these distinctive truffles is 31-year-old Mayee Fong, who first started baking as a passion. Right here’s how she managed to show her ardour right into a full-fledged enterprise.

Baking wasn’t an apparent profession selection

Mayee’s love for baking started on the age of 12—again then, she’d typically accompany her mom on grocery store journeys and help her within the kitchen.

“We baked the whole lot, from pizzas to marble truffles and buns, and she or he had a set of recipe books that I cherished to discover.”

This hands-on expertise ignited her ardour for baking, but it surely remained only a passion on the time.

She by no means thought of turning it right into a profession—that’s, till she realised {that a} conventional profession in accountancy (the diploma she was pursuing on the time at NTU) “wasn’t the correct path for her.”

Thus, she sought an apprenticeship at a bakery close to her house, incomes S$1,500 month-to-month. On her days off, she tried her hand at crafting her personal bakes, experimenting with totally different ratios of butter, flour, eggs, and sugar in every recipe.

“It took three years of house baking and plenty of laborious knocks to self-learn how you can create recipes. There have been many failures; I even bear in mind sitting on my balcony in tears at occasions,” she mentioned.

Over time, she perfected a chocolate cake recipe and commenced promoting it on-line to her buddies via Fb and Instagram.

As her truffles had been “well-received,” she made the choice to depart her bakery job and launch her personal cake enterprise—Bob the Baker Boy—in 2016, which she named after her favorite comic, Bob Lam.

Contemporary into entrepreneurship

Mayee’s home-baking days had been among the “most difficult moments” of her entrepreneurial journey.

She labored 16-hour days, dealing with “each facet of the enterprise by herself,” from “fulfilling orders and assembly deadlines, to arising with new merchandise and responding to buyer inquiries.”

I used to be contemporary into entrepreneurship and never but mentally ready for the stress that comes with working an organization.

Mayee Fong, founding father of Bob The Baker Boy

Mayee recalled a very tough second in 2018, when she designed a log cake for Christmas with a custard filling—solely to find that the filling wasn’t secure sufficient to carry the roll collectively.

“The truffles ended up melting. I had so many buyer complaints to deal with, and I ended up re-doing the whole lot myself on Christmas Eve.”

Regardless of these setbacks, Mayee remained resilient—she refined her baking abilities and realized how you can customise and adorn truffles. She additionally selected to concentrate on customised bakes after realising that “nobody would journey all the best way to distant Yishun,” the place she lived, for an extraordinary cake.

Finally, Mayee managed to construct a “loyal buyer base” and steadily grew her orders to round 40 per week.

From home-based to brick-and-mortar

It was at this level that Mayee realised she was able to take the following step in her work trip.

Utilizing the funds she had gathered from the previous three years of house baking, she moved right into a 600 sqft area and expanded her group, hiring two full-time staff and two interns.

“I stayed in that area for about three years—then, COVID-19 hit,” mentioned Mayee. Whereas a few of her orders had been cancelled, it was throughout this time that her latest recipe for molten lava cookies grew to become an surprising hit.

Based on Mayee, they went viral, and her group of bakers had been on their ft from morning to midnight to satisfy the demand.

Our bakers got here in at 6 a.m. daily, and for a lot of nights, we labored till midnight. Because the demand grew, so did our group, and we ultimately moved to an area 3 times bigger.

I spent one other three years there, main a group of 30. Finally, we outgrew that area, and now our central kitchen is in Pandan Loop.

Mayee Fong, founding father of Bob The Baker Boy

At the moment, Mayee claims that the enterprise is now within the “seven-figure income vary,” with a group of about 45 to 50 individuals, together with supply drivers. They’ve additionally seen a spike in company orders and have baked for corporations like Disney, Nestle, and Coach.

Scaling her enterprise

Trying forward, Mayee stays keenly conscious of a number of key challenges dealing with Singapore’s F&B business, notably in managing bills.

“The price of doing enterprise in Singapore is excessive, so managing bills is essential. If you happen to’re not cautious, margins can turn into very tight,” she shared.

Moreover, Singapore’s small market presents its personal set of challenges, particularly for area of interest companies like Mayee’s, which specialises in customised truffles. “There’s [only so much] we are able to scale earlier than needing to diversify or discover new verticals to continue to grow the enterprise.”

This led her to discover other ways to broaden the corporate, which led to the inception of Pinch Bakehouse in 2024—a halal sister model of Bob The Baker Boy.

All through the years of working Bob The Baker Boy, Mayee ceaselessly obtained requests for halal choices to accommodate buyer orders.

With Pinch Bakehouse, she is now in a position to fulfill these requests and has gained vital reputation amongst corporations, hospitals, and faculties for his or her gifting and catering wants.

As for Bob the Baker Boy, Mayee is seeking to broaden her attain and enchantment to a broader viewers by providing much more selections for her prospects.

“You’ll be able to anticipate extra product innovation from the enterprise, together with new cookie varieties and a diet-friendly vary of bakes, together with sugarless, dairy-free, gluten-free, and high-protein choices, in addition to extra giftable gadgets.”

• Study extra about Bob The Baker Boy right here.
• Learn different articles we’ve written about Singaporean startups right here.

Featured Picture Credit score: Bob The Baker Boy