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Meet Re’Gine Terry of Busy Baking in Hawthorne

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Re’Gine Terry.

Re’Gine, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
My baking journey started at Le Corden Bleu in 2011 straight out of high school. I graduated in November 2012 with honors and immediately began to work within the baking industry. I’ve worked at a children’s cooking camp, in the kitchen at Santa Anita race track and a couple of different popular bakeries in Los Angeles. The experience I gained from each position I’ve held taught me that one day I would like to have my own bakery. I took a few years off to start a family. I got married and had two children. During my time away from baking I stayed home because I breastfeed my children and decided to find something I could do from home. I’ve always known how to braid, my mom has owned her own hair salon my entire life. So I started by doing my family’s hair and taking pictures. I start a business Instagram page @hairbybusy and it slowly started to take off. I braided hair from home for about two years and it helped to provide for my family, but it wasn’t my passion. I slowly began to start baking again.

It started with me doing cakes for my family and some of my clients I got from braiding. Word spread and my business started to grow. At this time, I was pregnant with my second child. I took six weeks from braiding to prepare for my new child. During that time, a lot of cake orders were coming in for after my due date. I gave birth June 13th, 2017. Fast forward a month. I started working again, but this time baking took the front seat. Every weekend from that point on I had at least two custom cake orders. The number was slowly growing every month. By December 2017 I had so many cake orders coming in that I had to turn some down because I didn’t have enough space to store them all.

March 2018, I was blessed with the opportunity to open my own bakery. An investor gave me the money to find myself a location. By May, I find my shop and starting working on bringing my vision to life. I had my Grand opening July 21st, 2018 1 day before my 25th birthday. It was a very exciting and humbling experience. It taught me exactly how much I didn’t know about how much work it actually takes to run a business vs working from home. The first few months were great. Around October 2018 is when I started to feel the pressure. After Halloween business began to slow down. I’ve always had custom cake orders but now I had to have enough money coming in to cover the orders, all my new business expenses AND all the supplies I needed to keep the store fully stocked with individual items. Big Holidays were good but the weeks leading up to them were slow. At this point, I’m questioning everything that has happened and wondering if I made the right decision by opening a storefront. I made it through the end of the year, money was tight but the bills got paid.

God has always been a big part of my life. With the new year coming my husband and I began to try and get a better relationship with God and his will for our life. We discussed our vision for the year and what things we wanted to change. I had faith that if God gave me the opportunity to open this business that he would also send me the customers to keep it going.

It’s now January 2019, I’m still doing custom cakes and the store is still a little slow but picking up. The second custom cake I made this year went viral on Facebook! I can’t even express the emotion I felt in that moment. It has over 2.5 million views on Facebook and thousands of shares and comments. It’s been recreated and it also did really good on Instagram and made my following grow a lot. My in store traffic grew and things were looking great. A few months later, my husband did background for the Higher music video with Nipsey Hussle, John Legend and DJ Khaled. It was an amazing experience for him. A few days after the video we got the news that Nipsey was killed. We were heartbroken along with the rest of the world. I took those emotions and made a cake in tribute to Nipsey with help from my husband. I posted the cake and it instantly went viral. It was even reposted by Snoop Dogg and opened a lot of doors for me. This year my following on Instagram went from 1,200 to over 13k. I made my first cakes for celebrities and I shipped over 60 cakes all over the United States. I had a celebration for my first year in business and people waited in line for hours to support me, it was amazing. This year has taught me to never give up! What’s for you is for you and to be patience and wait on God. I can’t wait to see what’s in store for my business in 2020!

Has it been a smooth road?
The journey has been like a rollercoaster ride. I’ve have some lows and I’ve had some extreme highs. One of my biggest challenges was the transition between my house and the bakery. I became very comfortable being at home. I knew exactly how all the equipment worked and how to handle mishaps. Moving to the shop was like jumping out of my lifeboat and straight into the ocean with no safety jacket. I had to make it work or go broke. I had to get adjusted to all new equipment, a new environment and whole new side of business.

So, as you know, we’re impressed with Busy Baking – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of and what sets you apart from others.
I specialize is custom cakes for all occasions. From wedding cakes to baby showers and everything in between. Some of my top cake designs are my Boss Baby cakes, Nipsey Hussle cake and my Hennessy birthday cakes. I am most proud of the fact that I can show other young people that you don’t need a lot of money to make your dreams work. All you have is all you need. You can start your business at home and turn it into something that will one day ship products all over the United States. What sets us apart from other bakeries is our unique menu such as Hennessy pound cake, strawberry cheesecake brownies, cheesecake stuffed apples, strawberry lemonade pudding peach cobbler cheesecake and much more.

Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
I love the diversity of our city. You can drive for 10 minutes and feel as if your hours away. There’s so many little communities with so much culture and different experiences to offer. My least favorite part of Los Angeles would definitely be the traffic. 5 o’clock traffic is crazy no matter where you are.

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