Meet: Hetal Vasavada
Founder of: Milk and Cardamom
Tell us about your business:
Milk and Cardamom Sweets is an online bakery where I sell my infamous gulab jamun bundt cake, and other Indian-inspired desserts. The goal of my business is to keep the culture of mithai alive in America amongst Indian Americans and introduce Indian pastries and sweets to non-desis.
What was the best piece of business advice you were given when you were starting out?
Price your product properly and build a company you would want to work for. Pricing food can be difficult since most people are only willing to pay so much and the typical food business runs on 1% margins or less. I made a conscience decision to charge based on costs which include overhead from employees who are paid living wages, single-origin spices, and high quality ingredients. This helped me be profitable within a few months and have employees who are getting paid more than double the minimum wage.
Does your culture influence your choices and decisions? If yes, how?
For me Indian desserts hold a special place in my heart. We use them to celebrate weddings, the birth of a baby, good grades and so much more It is ingrained out our culture to start off new journeys with little bit of sweetness. I take a lot of my food experiences gorwing up as an Indian-American in New Jersey and create desserts that are not 100% Indian and not quite 100% American, just like me.
How do you balance your workload? What does self-care look like for you?
I can't say I've exactly figured out how to balance my workload between my bakery, content creation and projects, but I'm working towards it! However, self-care for me is going out to a restaurant and having a nice meal that I didn't have to cook for myself!
Discover more:
https://milkandcardamomsweets.com/
@milkandcardamom
