More Good Press

The Pupcakery has made quite a splash at the Astoria Sunday Market this summer, and we continue to hear "we read about you in the paper!" The first article was written in the "In One Ear" section of The Daily Astorian. The article told about the business and the award Maia won through Harlem Hip-Hop Tours earlier this summer (see past post for details). It had a nice picture of Maia in her booth at the market and generated a lot of talk.

Since that time she has also been written up in Bow-Wow!, a newspaper for dog lovers on the Oregon coast and the Coast River Business Journal. The word is out, and it is bringing in the customers! Maia isn't letting all the attention go to her head, and continues to do what needs to be done to get the dogs their treats. Ainsley has also done her share of helping with the baking and helping the customers in the market booth.

Thank you to all who read our blog and support The Pupcakery. This has proved to be a fabulous learning experience for both girls!

Next Market Date: June 28 (revised)

Maia has been selected to dance in the Astoria Music Festival's performance, "The Fairy Queen." The show is being choreographed by Catherine Turocy from the New York Baroque Dance Company, and the girls will perform with a live orchestra and several opera singers. Maia is playing the part of a fairy.

Due to the amount of time scheduled for rehearsals and the performance, she will not be able to have her booth at the Astoria Sunday Market on June 21. She will return to the market on June 28. She will also be set up in front of the Natural Nook in Seaside, OR during the Art Walk on July 4, from 5-8pm. She will be selling her usual biscuits along with some star-spangled treats for the furry friends in your lives. Hope to see you there!

To Market, To Market

Yesterday the girls took their product to market for the first time. We arrived at the market square at 8:30 to set up. The set up took about 45 minutes, and customers started wandering through around 9:30. The market didn't officially open until 10:00, but Maia had already made her first sale by 9:50. Overall it was a great day. They sold 28 pupcakes, 12 Hefty Howlers, 32 large bags of biscuits, and 17 small bags of biscuits. The traffic was pretty steady all day with a bit of a lull between 1:00 and 2:00 in the afternoon. Ainsley woreher cupcake baker's hat and apron and passed out samples. Maia handled the customers and took in the money. They came home with a full cashbox and a pretty empty set of biscuit bins. Now it's time to start baking for next week's market!

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

We are proud to announce that Maia has won the top cash prize of $100 for her Pupcakery business plan in a contest through Harlem Hip-Hop Tours. We purchased the Entrepreneurship Workbook from H3 Tours to work through the important aspects of building a business. The workbook included all of the important components of starting a business, including: target customers, competition, marketing and distribution strategies, and profit projections. Maia completed the workbook and used the results to assemble her own business plan. She submitted her plan in the H3 Tours' monthly contest, and she won! She beat out 25 other plans! Congratulations, Maia! Click here to read more.

Introducing....HEFTY Howlers

Well, we're back after a long month off from posting. Our days have been filled with all that comes with finishing up another school year, and there has been very little time for The Pupcakery. We did, however, develop another fabulous product.....the HEFTY Howlers. These biscuits come from the same recipe that is used for our Happy Howlers, but they're much, much bigger. Our good friend Jackson agreed to model with the new product for us in exchange for some free biscuits. Thank you, Jackson!

Another Satisfied Customer

It's always nice to hear from another happy howler. Here is an email we recently received from a four-legged friend:

My name is Little Richard and I am a seven year old standard poodle and I am very delighted with your Happy Howler Pup Cakes; good job. You can see in the attached pictures that I love them. Please give my regards to Cato and Darius.

Just look at Little Richard waiting so patiently. What a gentleman!

Thank you for your email! To our other customers, we would love to see more photos of your photogenic pooches. Send them our way and we'd be happy to add you to our blog.

Pupcakery Order Forms

Several people have been asking, "How do we order from you?" Well, we are thrilled to announce that it is oh so easy! If you like to order and pay online, you can visit our shop on Etsy at http://www.thepupcakery.etsy.com/. This is our online shop. It's brand new, and we don't have many options for ordering yet, but it's a start.

For a full list of products you can request an order form via email. Our email address is thepupcakery@gmail.com. You can then print out our order form, fill it out and mail it to us with your check or money order to the address on the order form. You can also email us your order so we can start working on it while you prepare and mail a check or money order. We also offer free delivery to those of you lucky enough live close to Warrenton!

The Pupcakery is only baking on Saturday and Sundays at this time. All orders will be ready to mail on the Monday after the order is received. We look forward to hearing from you!

What a Mess!

So, yesterday we were so pleased with our little pupcakes. They were beautiful. Remember? (See yesterday's post.) Well, today we put them into an airtight, plastic container so that they wouldn't get stale. We went to Portland for the day, and this is what we found when we got home.

We're not really sure WHY the frosting that was dry and a little crispy this morning is now moist and melting off the pupcakes. It may be that the sun was shining through the window and made the container like a little sauna. Maybe the moisture from the muffins was absorbed by the frosting. We're really not sure. We do know that Maia won't be selling this batch and we'll have to be careful how we package these in the future. More experimenting to come!

Most people spend Easter Sunday hunting for eggs, eating ham, and sorting through goodies in grass-filled baskets. We spent the day in the kitchen trying out new recipes for The Pupcakery. It was a typical, rainy Spring day here on the coast, and what better way to pass the time than by working on developing the next great product for Maia's business?

Ainsley wanted to do some baking early in the day, so we decided to try out a recipe for peanut butter biscuits. This is our easiest recipe so far, with only four ingredients: peanut butter, whole wheat flour, skim milk, and baking powder. We rolled and cut some with cookie cutters and also rolled some of the dough into balls and pressed with a fork like peanut butter cookies. This recipe bakes for 20 minutes (also our shortest cooking recipe), but the finished product was less than exciting. The biscuits were dull and cracked. Cato and Darius didn't seem to mind the less than appealing appearance, but we decided to adjust the recipe and try again.

The second batch came out much better. We were careful to roll the dough evenly and smooth out any cracks before cutting. We also brushed the biscuits with egg before baking. This batch came out shiny and smooth. Don't they look delicious?


They smelled wonderful, and of course Ainsley had to have a little taste. Apparently they smell better than they taste...unless you have four legs! Here are the ones made to look like peanut butter cookies. Could you be fooled?

Finally, we made a batch of pumpkin pupcakes. These little treats are baked in a mini muffin tin and frosted with a yogurt icing (made from a mix we ordered from Everything -Dog-Treats). The girls were very pleased with the final product....much better than their first attempt at pupcakes.

Maia made enough from her initial sales this week to send another product to the lab for testing, and is only about $10 shy of being able to send the third product as well. She also has another product in development. Stay tuned for the introduction of "lollipups."

We Have Liftoff

Maia sent off her first batch of Happy Howlers for lab analysis this week. We boxed up 1/2 pound of biscuits along with a letter letting the lab know what information we needed in regards to our biscuits.

We mailed the box to Omaha, Nebraska on Monday, and by today (Friday) we were able to access our data online through the lab's website. This is big news because Maia is now able to legally sell her first line of biscuits. Tim and I told her we would pay for the first lab analysis to get her business on its feet.

Her goal now is to sell enough Happy Howlers to generate enough funds to pay for the lab analysis on her other two products before the market opens in June. She figures if she sells 12-15 bags of biscuits, she will have enough. She has already lined up about 10 potential customers, and the ladies in the front office at school are spreading the word as well. I don't think she'll have any problems meeting her goal ahead of schedule. When she goes to the market in June she'll have three great products for her customers to choose from. Pretty wise business-woman, wouldn't you say? Congratulations, Maia. You're an entrepreneur!

Pupcakes...Take 1

The Pupcakery is all about providing gourmet treats for dogs, and what is a bakery without cupcakes (or PUPcakes in the dog world)? Well, we have searched high and low for a good recipe for delicious pupcakes. The first Pupcake recipe we tried looked and smelled delicious.

Ainsley could hardly wait to taste these yummy treats. She didn't even wait for the frosting!

Once they were frosted, they looked even better. Cato and Darius each got to test the first pupcakes, but they had to take them outside since we didn't want to have cream cheese frosting all over the kitchen floor. They were a big hit!

Darius even licked the deck clean!

Well, the final product was beautiful and the critics approved. Maia took a sample to her first meeting for the Young Entrepreneur's Club. By the time the meeting was over, the cream cheese frosting was melting and and had smeared all over the inside of the container she had it in. The multi-colored sprinkles were melting into the frosting, and we quickly realized that we would not have a way to keep the cream cheese frosting chilled at the market.

The pupcakes looked beautiful, but this is not the recipe we'll be taking to the market. The search continues...

Introducing....Happy Howlers

We have our first product: the Happy Howlers, a chicken-flavored biscuit that dogs love!

The girls first tested these biscuits with our own dogs, Darius and Cato. They gobbled them up and begged for more, but our dogs aren't really all that picky. Ainsley thought they smelled good, so she tried them too. She wasn't too impressed with the chicken flavor, but said she thought most dogs would enjoy them.

We took some to our four-legged friend Roxy. Here is what she had to say:

Four paws up to your delicious new dog cookies! I've already gobbled up my gift pack. I just can't get enough of the wonderful treats. My owner has been trying to make them last, but my new big-dog teeth are coming in and I love chewing sooooooo much. Your dog biscuits are just a perfect size, smell great and are nice and chewy for us pups.

Thank you, Roxy for your great review! We look forward to sending more treats your way, and we hope you spread the word to all your friends about our tasty treats.

A Rocky Start

So, you're probably wondering "where did this crazy idea come from?" Well, let me tell you. It all started with a flyer that showed up at school sometime in February, inviting kids in grades K-12 to join the Young Entrepreneur's and Market Biz Kids Club. The club is designed to allow a venue for young business boys and girls to design and start a business to run at the Astoria Sunday Market. Since we love the market, and I knew Maia was always up for a challenge, I suggested she give it a try.

Maia was immediately interested in the idea. Since we had previously run our own booth at the market in the past, she knew what being a vendor was all about, and only needed an idea for a product. The search for the perfect market was a challenge because there are so many great ideas out there, and Maia is a really creative kid. It was hard for her to nail down one thing she thought she could do and do well AND be something other people might want to buy.

One weekend I had gotten a bug to do some sewing, and created some softies out of felt, buttons, and embroidery thread. Maia and Ainsley both found this idea fascinating and jumped in to help out. We created several little projects over the weekend, and from this sewing session Maia decided she would like to try sewing felt food (cookies, cupcakes, and other bakery items) to sell for her business. She thought she might set up her display to look like a bakery, and had some great ideas for making the booth look appealing. We worked together for a couple of days to create some fun designs.

Unfortunately, Maia realized how much work it was going to be create these cute little goodies, and wasn't sure that there would be much of a market for felt cookies. It was from this idea, however, that the idea of baking real cookies and making them for the canine customers was born. We immediately started searching the net for information on making and selling treats for pets.

We learned so much right away! We found a very helpful website through the Oregon Department of Agriculture which outlined everything we would need to do to legally make and sell dog treats in Oregon. We learned about requirements for labeling. We learned about ingredient statements. Most importantly, though, we learned about the guaranteed analysis requirement. We found that in order to sell pet foods, your label needs to include the percentages of crude protein, crude fat, crude fiber, and moisture found in your product. How do you figure that out? We spent hours searching online before finally realizing that the only way to get this information is to have your product analyzed by a lab.

So, who does this testing and how much does it cost? Again, we searched and searched online to find that there are not many labs that do this sort of testing. The closest lab is located in Bellingham, Washington and charges $250 per product tested. That means if we wanted to sell two kinds of dog biscuits we would have to pay $500! We had hit a dead end. I broke the news to Maia. It looked as though we would not be making dog biscuits, and she was once again on the search for a product to sell at the market.

While Maia went off to think up a new business idea, I did a little more research. I couldn't believe that so many people in small markets and on sites like eBay and Etsy could be selling their dog treats and were paying $250 per product to have them tested before selling them to the general public. I decided to go right to the experts. I called and emailed several dog bakeries asking for resources for testing and recipes. It was a Monday, so my phone calls were not too productive, but I did receive responses to a couple of emails. Finally, I received a reply from Julie at The Love of Dog Bakery. She shared her similar experience in starting up her own business and recommended the lab they used in starting up, Midwest Laboratories. They only charge $27.50 for their testing, and they could get us the results in three days! Hurray! We were back in business (or on our way), and Maia was thrilled.

The Journey Begins

Welcome to The Pupcakery Blog! You can check here to find out what is new in the world of baking, testing, and selling dog biscuits in Astoria, Oregon. This is the place where we will document what is happening and what is new as Maia and Ainsley set out to create a successful business. We'll share our successes and our failures and document this exciting adventure that these two young entrepreneurs are about to embark on. Check back often to see what we are up to!