Today we’d like to introduce you to Keosha Griffiths.
Keosha, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
For as long as I have known, I have always loved baking – it’s essentially a part of my DNA. Growing up, my mother baked everything in our household from simple breads to complex double layer fruit cake/pound cake hybrids – all from scratch. She even had her own little baking hustle when she was growing up. So I have always loved baking and sweets. I had initially started as a cupcake blog, I would make a cupcake and relate it to a current life topic, that was all fun. However, in 2018, I wanted to take my baking to a next level. I had been throwing around the idea of cupcake pop-up shop, but never had the guts to do it. As I had moved to a new town, I was looking for ways to increase my income, when my mother told me, ‘turn your hobby, into your hustle’ and it really struck with me. I sat on the thought for a couple of days (and a Facebook Status later) on October 13th, 2018 – Osha’s Kitchen was officially born. We started with selling Pumpkin Bread & Cinnamon Pumpkin bread, our first customers were hooked. Initially intended to be a local home-based business (Currently physically located in the Greater New Orleans area), some of our first customers were in LA, and eventually word of mouth spread that the World’s Greatest Pumpkin Bread was coming out of New Orleans. After some requests, we expanded to Cookies and Brownies. Our menu expanded, so did our customer base. We quickly went from baking in Louisiana and shipping to CA to shipping to 15 different states in the US – Osha’s Kitchen was on a roll and we felt very blessed. From being scared to start to baking up a storm and having a nationwide customer base, has truly been inspiring.
In addition to baking, my second love is also Education. During Small Business Week in May 2019, I wanted to donate a small portion of our profits to a charity of our favor, but I could not think of a non-profit that I wanted to donate to, so in conversation with a coworker, I came up with a First Generation College Student Book Fund, for First Generation students to alleviate the cost of books. As a First Generation College Student, I knew first hand how the cost of books caught me off guard my first semester of college. Through small portions of baking proceeds and donations, Osha’s Kitchen started a book fund. During the summer of 2019, we opened our application and during our inaugural application cycle, we had ten applicants from 15 different states apply for our book fund scholarship. Osha’s Kitchen was able to award five hardworking First Generation Students Book Fund Scholarships. Our recipients lived in Florida, California, Chicago and Texas. Again, Osha’s Kitchen was spreading nation-wide, via word of mouth & social media, and it’s been a true blessing.
So here we are, 1.5 years old and still a home-based baking business spreading our love of baking through our sweets and education awareness. It’s crazy to think that something that was just a dream and a small blog has turned into something that’s so much more than that just baking. I truly love what I do here in Osha’s Kitchen because I had found a way to mix my two things that are passionate to me and aspire to change lives.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Having a small based home-baking business has definitely not been a smooth road. Being a small business, a lot of what I started with was my own personal capital and having to figure things out on my own. I did a lot of research and asked a lot of questions, had a lot of trial and error. Some weeks business was slow, and some patrons would tell me that my products were ‘too overpriced’ and I would second guess myself and if my business would succeed, or how to market my business without feeling like I’m ‘pestering my social media friends’. Just thoughts of if this was a good idea if this market is oversaturated, but I love what I do and so do my customers, so I adjusted recipes and prices and have found a groove. But along the way, I had friends and other small business owners offer advice and suggestions to which I have found have made the un-smooth road a little smoother.
Please tell us about Osha’s Kitchen.
Osha’s Kitchen is a small home-based baking business that specializes in everything sweet. We bake cookies, pound cakes, brownies, quick breads, cake-pops, muffins, cupcakes – if it’s sweet, we can bake it. We are specially known for our cookies and pound cakes. Our customers especially love our Chocolate Cookies and our Salted Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies. Our fan favorite pound cake is our Pink Moscato Pound cake. Our Pumpkin Bread which gained us national notoriety.
As a company, I am most proud of our ability to think outside the box and come up with regular recipes but also add our own little Osha’s Kitchen twist too it. Our motto is ‘Everything in Osha’s Kitchen is Baked with Love’ and I truly believe that our customers can taste the love when they try our products.
What sets us apart from other is the personal touch we offer all of our customers, but also the fact that while we are a home-based baking business, we also offer the opportunity to give back to future generations of college students by offering a First Generation College Student book fund scholarship. Not many baking business take their proceeds to help first-generation students with their college books, and while we believe that sweets are important – we also value education.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
If I had to start all over again, I don’t necessarily think I would do anything differently because I love the journey this has been. However, I would say that if I had to do something differently – I would definitely put all my ducks in a row before I started in regards to social media and web-presence. I feel like I started the business with an email and a google form, and eventually decided to get social media pages (Instagram and Facebook) after being continuously asked if I had social media. I think marketing was an issue that I had along the way, so I would start over again with marketing first.
Pricing:
- Dozen Cookies are $24; Half Dozen are $12
- Pound Cakes are 2 for $22.
- Brownies are $24 for a dozen; $12 for half dozen
Contact Info:
- Website: www.oshaskitchen.com
- Phone: 504-300-9424
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oshas_kitchen
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/oshaskitchen
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