The Sweetest Business In Sydney
January is an exciting and inspiring time for me as i dedicate this month to highlighting my fellow filipino entrepreneurs right here in Australia. Since launching our community "Filipino Australian Business Collaborative" It's been my goal to really use the platform that i have to share the unique gifts, talents and the hard work that my fellow Filipino entrepreneurs have been passionately sharing through their business.
Today I have the owner and founder of "Maldita's Sydney" Catherine Bautista.
It's so inspiring to see how Catherine's business evolved from a simple hobby making cakes for her daughters birthday and now being one of the most sought after Filipino Cake Bakery right here in Sydney.
Read on as Catherine shares with us her story and her tips for those who are thinking of starting their own business too.
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I arrived here in Sydney when I was 19 and fresh from Uni I took Hotel and Restaurant Management. I love cooking but i wasn't really into baking.
I got into baking when i had kids and i was on and off work to stay home and look after my kids - I was a stay home mum for almost 6 years and that's when i started baking birthday cakes.
(Catherine putting the finishing touches on her cake)
We had my daughters 8th birthday & it was a make your own cupcake theme and it was then i realised that selling cakes and cupcakes would be great business. There are a lot of filipino bakeries in our area and so i had to make sure that our cakes stood out and were different from the rest.
Our first cake was the Ube cake then the Yema cake. Traditional Filipino cakes and they were really popular.
To add more variety to the cakes that we offer we thought of making Puto de leche - This cake has been around and are also available in other bakeries, and so we decided to have different flavours - now we have 5 different flavours.
Why MALDITAS? A lot of people ask.
Maldita is my personal Facebook name and we wanted people to remember our name so we made sure it was catchy and unique.
Maldita means naughty in tagalog, opposite from sweet, and so naughty comes from having too much sweets & how sugar's not good for your diet.
Having to put up a business here in australia is not easy & because our cakes and desserts are originally from the philippines and are the traditional cakes, we needed to find where we can buy the ingredients.
Most of the things that i need for my cakes can only be bought from overseas, but thank God for Filipino shops & the for rest of the things that i needed i would have to make a few trips to the Philippines.
Having my own business changed my life.
Now that I have "Maldita's" i have the opportunity
to meet new people and because we treat our customer
like our own we become friends.
Communication with your customers help you to know your market well to improve your products and knowing what your market wants.
There's always room for improvement, and so the advice that i can give to others who want to create their own business, is to just go for it follow your gut feeling.
There's always trial and error it's not always paradise but at the end of the day you'll tell yourself that you've tried & for sure if you put you heart into it you'll succeed.
It's not all about the profit that you will receive but it's the thought that you're making someone happy.
Catherine Bautista
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