There is an increasing pressure on today’s high school students to plan for a long-term career that will bring in the big bucks, passion optional. This is a big decision that is unrealistic for anyone to make while they are still in high school. Many students spend sleepless nights pouring over statistics, job readouts and personality questionnaires because the world is telling them they need to decide their futures NOW. But figuring out who you are and where your passion lies can take years, and can sometimes only be discovered through experience.
Stella Luberto, owner of Stella’s Custom Cakes in Marlborough, is a living testimony of this process. One day, she and her two daughters, 10 and 6, decided to buy fondant and to decorate a cake. The family had fun decorating with fondant, so Stella learned how to make it from scratch to replicate the experience for her daughters at a lower price. When it came time for her oldest daughter’s birthday, Stella used the fondant to decorate the cake. “The cake was a huge hit,” says Stella, and family members and friends started asking her to decorate cakes for their events. Stella grew up in a family of bakers and pastry chefs: her brother owns a bake shop, and has been in business for over thirty years. Being the youngest, Stella was never able to work in her brother’s bakery, so she learned to make and decorate cakes through hands-on trial and error. She researched cake architecture and design, relying heavily on visual resources like YouTube. Orders started flowing in, and Stella began charging for cakes so she could pay for the supplies. At the time, Stella was working a full-time job in the mortgage industry and decorating cakes on the side. But a layoff forced Stella to consider turning her cakes into a full-time operation. Taking the plunge, Stella took some classes and earned a license from the Board of Health. “And I never looked back,” Stella says. Now Stella was decorating cakes for larger events like weddings and received her first contract “gig” from a birthday party center in Wellesley, which she still works with today. Eventually Stella’s kitchen became too small to handle all of her orders. “I figured, too, it was time to open a storefront to build my reputation,” she said. “I mean, if you were buying a wedding cake, would you rather buy it from a bakery or from a lady who decorated it in her kitchen?” Stella and her husband opened Stella’s Custom Cakes at its 25 Boston Post Road East location 18 months ago, and the business was met with an overwhelming response from the community. Currently Stella’s is looking to expand to a bigger location not only to maximize kitchen space and productivity, but to offer cooking classes to bakers of all ages. Stella envisions teaching basic Buttercream classes, fondant decorating classes, and hosting kid’s cupcake parties. To any students considering opening their own business, she says to do as much research as possible and to observe people who do what you want to do and learn from them. She also advises spending a good deal of time learning about the financial part of owning a business. “I went into opening my storefront assuming it would be a low-key cake shop, but there was so much more to it than that.” Stella says it’s ironic how she ended up following in her brother’s footsteps after 15 years of working in the mortgage industry. “Who would’ve thought?” she says, laughing. “Life can be crazy like that.” By: Jennie O'Leary -Staff Writer Comments are closed.
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AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
June 2019
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