Selling Custom Macarons From Home with Nicole Barry

The Forrager Podcast for Cottage Food Businesses

Nicole Barry is a classically-trained French pastry chef and an expert macaron maker. But after working long hours in 5-star hotels and restaurants, Nicole and her husband started a family, and she wanted to stay at home with the kids.

In 2016, Nicole started Bake Toujours, a cottage food business in Pasadena, CA which allowed her to take her skills to the farmers market. She built a customer base and generated a decent side income, even though she could only work 3 hours per day while her kids were in school.

Nicole’s macarons really stand out. Her Instagram feed showcases so many different flavors, color swirls, decorations, and custom shapes: unicorns, rainbows, strawberries, foxes, flowers, and even Eeyore!

In 2019, she took her skills to YouTube, where she posts amazingly high-quality videos and tutorials. Within a year, she accrued over 10k subscribers, with over 150k views on her most popular video!

Nicole now lives in Portland, OR, and she has put her cottage food business on hold while she focuses on her growing YouTube audience.

In this episode, Nicole shares many tips on making and selling macarons, as well as her transition from prestigious restaurants to farmers markets to YouTube.

What You’ll Learn

• What it’s like to work in the kitchen of a 5-star hotel or restaurant
• Tips to setup your home kitchen more efficiently
• How Nicole prices her French pastries
• Where Nicole learned to make custom-shaped macarons
• How to make macarons, and why they’re challenging
• The difference between the French, Italian, and Swiss meringue methods
• Why French meringue is not used for buttercreams
• The #1 way to improve your macarons
• The importance of finding a product that fits the needs of a market
• Why Nicole never pursued decorated cakes and cookies
• The good and bad sides of social media
• Why Nicole focused more on farmers markets than on custom orders
• The best way to extend the shelf life of macarons
• How to run a successful cottage food business with only 3 hours per day
• What it is like to start a YouTube channel with 100k+ views
• How Nicole got 10k+ YouTube subscribers in one year
• Why it is initially difficult to make money from YouTube

Resources

Bake Toujours

YouTube Channel

Instagram Feed

WebstaurantStore (kitchen supplies)

Get full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/17