“It started as a lockdown hobby when I was pregnant, I was craving sugar. I started baking, posting photos on Facebook and people were just going mad for it.”<\/p>\n
Abi Smith started out as a home baker during the pandemic, delivering cakes to people’s doorsteps fully masked up and wearing protective gloves.<\/p>\n
Now, she has transformed her pregnancy craving and lockdown baking into her own business, and has taken it a step further by opening a stall at Oswestry Market.<\/p>\n
Called Bake Baby, Smith sells cakes and desserts like “school cake”, cornflake tarts and deep filled cookie pies, as well as food prep bowls – a part of the business she calls Buff Box Meal Prep.<\/p>\n
However, it was not a straightforward route, as Smith took a break from the business after lockdown and returned to her job at Costa Coffee, due to the precarity of the work.<\/p>\n
“When you’re just a home baker it’s not the most secure job, because one week you’ll get loads of orders and the next week you won’t get any,” she told BBC Radio Shropshire.<\/p>\n
“So when you have kids – I’ve got two now – you just want that security.”<\/p>\n
But Smith returned to Bake Baby and is now celebrating moving into Oswestry Market, a place she said she’d always wanted have a spot at.<\/p>\n
“I’d say most business owners’ dream is to have a premises and I just feel like businesses don’t get enough help for that, with business rates, all the bills,” she said.<\/p>\n
“You have to make sure you’re getting that custom in and I just feel unless you’re viral on social media you’re not gonna get that custom in forever.”<\/p>\n
She has transformed the formerly grey stall by “jazzing” it up, by including lots of the colour pink.<\/p>\n
‘I have been baking since I was a kid’<\/p>\n
Smith’s prowess in the kitchen extends right back to her childhood.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been baking since I was a kid really. Dad says I used to just chuck stuff together without scales in the kitchen,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I just come in with muffins and stuff and they’d taste them and they’d be good – I don’t remember any of this.”<\/p>\n
And while plenty of sweet treats are on the menu, a big aspect of the business is healthier options for people conscious about the macronutrients of what they eat.<\/p>\n
Smith said: “I always struggle to eat in town. Not that I’m fussy, I like to know what’s going in my body and none of them put the macros on the menu.<\/p>\n
“All my menus have the macros: the calories, the protein, the carbs, the fat.<\/p>\n
“Everything on the menu is what I eat every week, so I’ve literally created a menu of what I like to eat and hopefully people like to eat it too.”<\/p>\n
Follow BBC Shropshire on BBC Sounds<\/a>, Facebook<\/a>, X<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n More on this storyRelated internet links