They started this from scratch
After their friends inspired them, two Penn students turned a love for baking and innovative recipes into a start-up.
ROOPA SHANKAR and Alina Wong, both 21 and of University City, are seniors at Penn's Wharton School and College of Arts and Sciences, respectively, and cofounders and co-CEOs of NOMsense Bakery, a wholesale and catering bakery. The business specializes in cookie sandwiches; it sells its product in three Philly coffee shops and caters Penn-related events. I spoke to Shankar.
Q: How did you come up with the idea?
A: Alina and I met on campus in February 2014 and spent a lot of time baking and innovating with old recipes. We saw a lot of standard dessert options around campus but nothing that was an exciting, innovative brand reaching out to millennials. Our friends inspired us when they said they would buy our cookies. We came up with the name NOMsense Bakery to suggest culinary whimsy and wanted to stand for one core product, the NOMwich.
Q: The start-up money?
A: We initially self-funded. In April 2015 we did a crowdfunding campaign, raising $4,000 to incorporate, get insured and rent kitchen space.
Q: What's the biz do?
A: We have four NOMwiches, made with snickerdoodle, brown sugar, coconut and maple oatmeal cookies, each with different fillings, drizzles and toppings. We make them at the Center for Culinary Enterprises and pay a $100 annual membership fee and minimum $60 for two hours of fridge and freezer space.
Q: How is the biz model work?
A: We're a wholesale bakery and catering service. We have three wholesale clients, Petrus Ky Café, HubBub Coffee and Elixir Coffee. Penn has official vendors and we're an approved caterer so we can service the campus community directly. We currently do between two and six catering orders weekly. That could be 20 cookie sandwiches for a faculty meeting to 300 for an event for a student organization. We personally deliver every single cookie sandwich.
Q: What is special about the product?
A: We think of it as dessert architecture. We design our product in a way that's aesthetically appealing and an innovative experience for the consumer. We start with cookie dough, create a filling, draw drizzle on the cookies and top them. The sandwiches retail for between $2.50 to $2.75 each.
Q: Who is a typical consumer?
A: It's a young millennial who wants to associate with a brand doing cool things. We know it's somebody who appreciates handcrafted products and likes knowing the face behind the brand.
Q: The biggest challenge?
A: The biggest hurdles were all the regulations and legal issues. We were in the Wharton Venture Initiation Program and they gave us a lot of resources and mentorship along the way, which helped us to establish credibility.
Q: How big a biz?
A: Besides me and Alina, we have eight student-interns, who do marketing, finance and oversee the website. We had about $7,000 in revenue in 2015, which was reinvested in the business.
Q: What's next?
A: The question is how to make this business sustainable after we graduate. Our goal is to have our own bakery storefront somewhere in University City with a sit-down space, and also offer cakes and coffee. The next step is to evaluate what kind of external funding we need and how we raise it.
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