More to the story…

My first bakery

Back when I was 24 years young, I opened my first bakery. At the time I knew nothing about hospitality, profit and loss or sales targets. I was young, naive, and adamant I wanted to throw my life savings into opening my own bakery. Everyone around me thought I was crazy and worst of all - they told me so! But this constant disbelief in my dream by others gave me even more reasons to persevere and sparked a lifetime desire to become a successful entrepreneur.

Travelling to Paris and Beyond

Throughout my time owning a bakery I would travel once a year to Paris to learn a new skill. Almost everything I knew about baking and operating a business I learned online, but everything else (like making macarons, croissants and gateaux), I learned in Paris.

Over these years I travelled to Paris, London, New York and Los Angeles in search of the best bakeries. I would analyse their business models, product range, packaging and customer service to determine what made these bakeries the best in the world. To say I was obsessed with the business of baking would be a severe understatement!

Taking a break

After three and a half years owning my first business and building it to be a 7 figure business, I stepped aside for some time off. This break happened to collide with the pandemic, so my few months quickly turned into two years after I found myself stuck overseas for the entirety of 2020. The following year I pursued a handful of other pursuits - namely obtaining my pilates instructor qualifications and funnily enough, working back in the kitchen of my old bakery some evenings.

Opening Brooki Bakehouse

In May 2022 I opened the doors to my new bakery BROOKI in Brisbane, Australia. My second time around I was much more equipped with the skills required to own and operate a business, as well as a more patient and understanding leader given I was a little older and wiser.

The first eight months of the bakery was a slow and steady start. I wanted to learn everything in my business from the ground up before I hired any full time team members, so I could establish systems and finalise the recipes, product range and pricing by testing the market in real time.

Fast track to now, in just one year of marketing the bakery on social media we have gained 1.8m followers on Tiktok, 500k on Instagram and over 120k on Youtube. With a fast growth strategy in organic content creation I have still spent next to $0 on marketing to build a highly profitable business and globally recognisable brand. I’m excited to share with fellow bakers, business owners and entrepreneurs exactly how they can bake better and do business better for their own financial freedom.

the team at my first bakery, Charlie’s Dessert House