Everyone has spent their time differently during the past six months of social distancing. Some have picked up a new hobby, such as sewing, painting, and reading. Some have taken this time to relax and take a break from their typical fast-paced lives. Others have seized it as an opportunity to pursue dreams that they couldn’t have had otherwise. Junne Bakery, founded by Allison Zhu, was one such aspiration.
“It’s kind of a passion project I started,” describes Allison, a junior at SMHS. She sells baked goods to members of her community and currently donates 75% of all her profits to the Lebanese Red Cross, but the cause changes depending on need and what she feels the most strongly about.
Although her bakery opened up only in August, Allison had long since dreamed of creating one, which was what really pushed her into getting it started. She originally wanted to just bake cakes for those with quarantine birthdays, but her sister drove her to expand, and now she sells a variety of delicious, home-made treats.
“I love baking, so I wanted to combine that and get people to be aware of current issues… just create something meaningful,” she comments.
However, building up a bakery from scratch is no small undertaking, Allison confirms. The planning is without a doubt one of the most difficult parts of it.
“It was a really long process. There’s a lot more going into it than you think,” she says. “I planned so much, but eventually I decided to just start it….so now I’m kind of just going with the flow, you know?”
There is also a lot of anxiety attached with starting a small business, she adds, “You’re always thinking, what if no one wants to eat my food? What if it tastes bad?”
Support from friends and family members helps a lot, though, and interactions with them and the other customers were the best parts of this journey—other than the baking, of course.
Even though she is taking three APs and participating in many other activities, Allison wishes to continue Junne Bakery throughout the school year and balances her work-school life with priorities and schedules.
“I think you always need to have a plan, you know? Like, I only fulfill orders on the weekends and I know that, for example, this week I’m going to release this product, or this post.”
As a parting word, Allison has a message to everyone else out there that would love to start a successful business just like her but are hesitant to for whatever reason: “Know why you want to do it. Make sure the reason can properly motivate you. Other than that, you gotta just jump into it, just commit, full send.”