Jacy Vinson lives in Eagle River, AK and sells both baked goods and recipes with her business, Joy-Full Bites.

Jacy has long dreamed of opening a brick-and-mortar bakery, but once she became a stay-at-home mom, she decided to start selling baked goods from home instead.

Her cottage food business slowly and steadily grew, but once she had her second child, she couldn’t dedicate as much time to selling at popup events, so started selling recipes as well.

In this episode, Jacy shares how this hybrid approach of selling both physical and digital products has allowed her to provide for her family in a sustainable way.

3 Key Takeaways

• Start Small with Your Menu: When Jacy did her first major event, she only brought three items (with some variations). The result? $1,200 in profit over three days! She learned early on that a huge menu was overwhelming. Keeping it simple let her focus on quality and still crush it.
• Think Beyond Baked Goods: After her second baby, Jacy couldn’t keep up with weekly orders and farmers markets. So she pivoted to selling her gourmet cookie recipes digitally. Now she makes more in some months from selling recipes than she did working an entire summer at markets, while being home with her kids!
• Use Facebook Groups to Build Your Business: Jacy grew her customer base by sharing in local Facebook groups AND started her own cottage food group (now 2,000+ members!). It became the perfect place to test new recipes, get feedback, and connect with customers who keep coming back.

Resources

Joy-Full Bites website (Instagram | Facebook | Recipes)

Gourmet Cookie Creators: Recipes, Tips & Sweet Support (FB Group)

Episode 150 (features Jacy)

Hotplate

Alaska Cottage Food Law

Free Tutorial: Intro To Email Marketing

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Are you building an email list for your business yet? If not, you really should be collecting customers’ email addresses and emailing them on a regular basis. Even these days, email continues to be better than social media for generating consistent sales, and the best part is that you own it. Once you build an email list, nobody can take it away from you.

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Get full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/157