Who am I? Find out how I set the business up!
Taking a little walk round memory lane today and thinking about how Sarah's Creative Kitchen actually came about. I know I've shared a few times about why I started the business, but I don't think I've shared as often the conversation I had with Michael the day the business was born.
We were sat in the kitchen at the table and I'd decided there and then that I wanted to create something to give me the option of staying at home with Alfie shortly after his birth. I really didn't want to go back to the office grind, after trying so hard to bring him into this world. The thought of leaving him with a childcare service or sitter so young was something I just couldn't sit with.
Always being a keen cook, enjoying all different types of food and loving socialising, I know eventually the ultimate dream would be to open up an eatery... but knew there'd be stepping stones to get there.
I'd been making treats at home for myself for a while, as I was on a journey at the time trying to lose weight and trying to find chocolate low enough in calories for me to enjoy without feeling guilty was very, very difficult.
I think I was doing slimming world at the time, which is why our chocolates have syn and WW points nutritional information on them, and I remember the conversations being had about how many "syns" chocolate and other sweet treats had... in my head I was really sacrificing the hard work I was putting in if I was enjoying a chocolate bar in an evening, even if my calories were under what I needed to lose. It created a really unhealthy relationship with food, truth be told. Always second guessing what I was eating, meticulously adding up calories and points, it was totally overbearing in how much of my life it was taking up.
Fed up of having to do it down to the detail every time something passed my lips I started making my own chocolates that I knew the "syn" value of and knew I could grab and go. It made the plan a lot easier to follow at that time, especially with a baby in tow.
I have a healthier relationship with food now but I think this part of the way I viewed food was a blessing in disguise really because, without it, the business wouldn't have ever come into fruition. It's all a part of our story.
Anyway, I was sat at the table with Michael and in one day we'd come up with the name, the business plan, the artwork to start and our first ever website. Sarah's Creative Kitchen was real.
It was a Sunday and I'd actually promised him his favourite roast dinner if he helped me, which he was conned out of in the end as we ended up working a solid 8 or 9 hours to get it done so ordered in a takeaway... oops!
No fancy launches, no frills, no high end budget ...
And then we started grafting.
The business took off very quickly really. I wrote about the post-launch ins and outs in a previous post you can read here: CLICK HERE
I started off in the kitchen at home, it wasn't long before I was teaching people to cook around my own kitchen counter, and the business just boomed from there.