Pulling an all nighter to bake 36-75 cookies, junior Mae Honeycutt prepares batch after batch to sell to her peers the next day. Her friends are excited to try her own weekly lineup of what she considers her own small business – Made by Mae Bakery, where she sells homemade cookies.
Honeycutt started baking cookies when she was 5 with her mom teaching her how to bake. She was scrolling on Pinterest one day and got interested in making cookies for her classmates, after baking them they turned out good and she decided to start selling them, and starting her own weekly, Crumbl Cookie inspired lineup.
“I’ve always liked baking cookies,” Honeycutt said. “I wanted to make cookies like Crumbl’s [be]cause I didn’t like theirs and I thought I could do better.”
It takes Honeycutt about an hour to bake a batch of cookies.
“I’m not very good at managing my time, so I stay up until 4 a.m. a lot of [the] time baking them,” Honeycutt said. “I take a lot of breaks when I’m baking them, [so] instead of actually baking them, it takes me six or seven hours to make them because I take a break every 30 minutes.”
To fix this issue, Honeycutt tries to prioritize her time management. She made her own spreadsheet to keep track of her daily routine with her business, being a Majestic, and schoolwork.
“It can be really stressful at times, but I’ve put a lot of things that I really like doing on my schedule,” Honeycutt said. “I always have something to look forward to even if it’s something busy and I enjoy being busy.”
At first Honeycutt was selling cookies to just her friends. As word got around about how delicious her cookies are, other people started to buy off of her.
“The most rewarding part is making a lot of new friends and meeting a bunch of people,” Honeycutt said. “It started off as just selling them to anyone who would buy them and now it’s a lot of people who I don’t know asking me to buy cookies. It’s been really interesting to watch all of the new customers come in and get to know new people that I haven’t met before.”
At Honeycutt’s first sale, she sold 16 cookies. At her recent sales, she reached 80 cookies and 90 cake pops.
“I was so proud of myself,” Honeycutt said. “Now I sell anywhere from 30 to 100 each week. I was really proud and surprised honestly because I was not expecting that whatsoever. I was so scared to sell cookies.”
To come up with new cookie flavors, Honeycutt goes to other cookie businesses’ Instagrams and gets inspiration. She also takes her classmate’s opinions on her business, which boosts her performance.
“[Having no competition] is phenomenal,” Honeycutt said. “I have to grow my confidence in my own cookies and it’s not just the fact that they’re cheaper than other people’s, but that they’re actually good.”
Honeycutt used to sell her cookies for $3, but just recently raised the price to $4.
“I changed the price of my cookies because I wanted to spend more money on supplies so that [the cookies] could be bigger and look better,” Honeycutt said. “I [also] wanted to put my money towards marketing. I upped the price of my cookies so that I would also make enough money to get paid the hourly price that I wanted to”.
For Valentine’s Day, Honeycutt tried out something new by selling cake pops.
“I want to start selling things other than cookies,” Honeycutt said. “I want to try making cupcakes and cakes custom ordered and then selling to a broader audience”
Honeycutt said that her best piece of advice for teens starting out their own business is to prioritize time management.
“Start off being confident in what you’re selling and have higher prices, so you don’t have to raise them after already selling them,” Honeycutt said. “I’m really happy that I was able to make a community of people who like to buy cookies. I think it’s really cool, it’s not something I would’ve expected when I first started selling cookies.”
For more information about her business, or to buy cookies from her, visit her Instagram at @madebymae.bakery and message her to pre-order.
