Featured Project: Amai Tea and Bake House
Amai Tea and Bake House was a retail and wholesale bakery located in New York City. I founded the bakery in 2005, and grew it to 15+ employees with annual sales exceeding $500k by 2009.
My Role: Founder, Chef and President
The Amai Story:
After spending several years in the online world, I wanted to create a "real-world" product that positively affected people's daily lives. I turned to my love of baking and tea and used it to develop a concept for a new bakery. Inspired by the way a cafe can bring a community together, I aimed to develop a brand that was approachable and appealed to quality-conscious consumers across cultures, not just sweet-toothed Americans.
I began by developing recipes for tea cookies in 2005 and baked them out of a shared commercial kitchen on the weekends. Tea was beginning to increase in popularity in the US at the time, and the idea of using real, finely ground tea in baked goods was unique. The cookies, named Tea Sweets, quickly caught on, and I began selling wholesale to specialty cafes, retailers and catalogs throughout the US. Our most popular product, Green Tea Sweets, won the award for Best Bakery Recipe from the French Culinary Institute, and the recipe became a hit in the online food blog world.
After building the brand and product line through the wholesale channel, and gaining customer support through blogs and community food websites, I focused on opening a cafe where I could interact with customers directly. The retail outlet opened in 2005 in the Gramercy area of Manhattan, and we expanded the product line to include a wider variety of freshly baked goods including cakes, muffins and croissants, along with artisanal loose-leaf tea and fair-trade coffee. The shop was a neighborhood favorite, and received numerous awards including Best New Tea House in New York City and was listed in New York's 50 Best Places to Enjoy Dessert.
Skills/Experience:
- Created the business plan, sales projections and budgets
- Responsible for all company accounting and payroll
- Established and managed vendor relationships
- Wrote all product copy and consulted on the design of product packaging
- Co-designed retail store interior
- Marketed through trade shows, blogs and e-newsletters
- Developed recipes and maintained food safety standards in a professional kitchen
- Taught classes on baking, tea and coffee
- Gave promotional TV/radio interviews and product demonstrations.
Retail Store Menu:
Retail Store Pictures:
Packaging Samples:
Press:
A full list of press articles is available at amainyc.com/site/press
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Download Resume (PDF)
