Sophie Evanoff on Scaling, Giving Back, Self-Care, and Working While Having Fun

Sophie Evanoff is the Owner and Operator of Vanille Patisserie, a French-inspired patisserie specializing in French macarons, pastries, and cakes. She has been an innovator in the pastry world since 2011, when she acquired the company from her pastry school instructor. Since then, Sophie has successfully run multiple locations in Chicago. In 2016, she was the first female recipient of the James Tyree Emerging Business Leadership Award. As a recognized thought leader in pastry arts, Sophie has spoken and served as a panelist at several events, including the Sharing Success: Women in Business Lincoln Park Chamber of Commerce panel and networking breakfast and the Wintrust Women’s History Month event.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Sophie Evanoff reflects on her baking career and journey to entrepreneurship
How Sophie pivoted during the pandemic
How and why Vanille Patisserie contributes to its community
What inspires Sophie and the Vanille Patisserie team’s creativity?
The challenges of expanding and scaling too quickly
RPIA’s beneficence to bakers and the baking industry
Self-care: why it’s essential for business owners to reset

In this episode…

Entrepreneurs are often expected to grow and scale their businesses as quickly as possible. However, this isn’t always realistic and can lead to potential challenges. Rather, the characteristics of success vary between entrepreneurs.

Baking entrepreneur Sophie Evanoff has noticed that many industry conferences often focus on funding and scaling. However, expanding too quickly can be detrimental to a company’s survival. As an owner and operator, it can be challenging to manage several locations, as issues such as in-house theft, early closures, staffing concerns, and poor service quality can arise. Although it appears that more stores would generate more revenue, mediocre service is costly and may cause a business to lose money. Bakery owners like Sophie prefer to operate on a smaller scale to have more control over their business. Additionally, small-scale bakers strive to be their own bosses and work in an industry they’re passionate about.

On today’s episode of the Celebrity Gourmet Podcast, Odette D’Aniello welcomes Sophie Evanoff, Owner and Operator of Vanille Patisserie, for an intimate conversation about entrepreneurship. Sophie talks about pivoting during the pandemic, the importance of giving back to the community, the challenges of scaling too quickly, and why resetting as a business owner is essential.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode…

Today’s episode is brought to you by Celebrity Cake Studio, a family-owned and operated cake boutique.

Celebrity Cake Studio has been baking joy into all of their artistically designed cakes and desserts for 21 years.

They are proud to work with a vibrant team of cake designers and bakers that help you celebrate the sweet moments in your lives.

They have received numerous awards, winning Best of Western Washington for many years in a row and various small business accolades.

To learn more about how you can celebrate yourselves or the ones you love, visit www.celebritycakestudio.com or email them at info@celebritycakestudio.com.

Episode Transcript:

Intro 0:03

Welcome to the Celebrity Gourmet Podcast where we feature top a bakery and specialty food entrepreneurs from around the world and share stories and tips on how to create a successful life in the baking world.

Odette D’Aniello 0:23

Hi, I’m Odette D’Aniello, the host of the Celebrity Gourmet Podcast, where I interview women in bakery to hear how they live fun, creative lives and share their adventure in running a bakery business. I want to encourage you to go back and check out our past episodes with Sara Brook of Desert Gallery in Houston, Katie Poppe, Founder and CEO of Blue Star Donuts, Olga Sagen, a Piroshky Piroshky, Marlene Goetzler, from Freeport Bakery, and Bronwen Weber, a Bronwen Cakes in Dallas. Today, I am super excited to talk to Sophie Evanoff, Owner and Operator of Vanille Patisserie. She has been changing the world of pastry right from a storefront bakery since 2011. After she acquired the company from her pastry school instructor, a classically trained pastry chef, Sophie has been successfully running multiple locations in Chicago. She’s the first female recipients of the James Tyree Emerging Business Leadership Award in 2016. And I am so grateful to be able to hear our story. Today’s episode is brought to you by Celebrity Gourmet Ventures, Celebrity Cake Studio and Dragonfly Cakes were a family-owned and operated specialty bakery in Tacoma, Washington in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. At Celebrity Gourmet, we have been baking joy into all of artistically designed cakes and desserts for 25 years. We’re proud to work with a vibrant team of cake designers and bakers, who help you celebrate the sweet moments in your life. To learn more about how you can celebrate yourself and the ones you love, visit us at celebritycakestudio.com and dragonflycakes.com orr info@celebritycakestudio.com. Before introducing Sophie, I wanted to give a big thank you to RPIA, Resource Partners in Action. It’s a conglomerate of bakery owners from around the country. It’s actually a buying Co-Op. And if you want to know more about a buying Co-Op message me or we can talk about it during this podcast. And also to my friend Andrea Herrera of Amazing Edibles Gourmet and Catering of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization, Chicago chapter. If you want to learn more about RPIA or EO, please message me and I’ll forward you all the information that you need. So I wanted to say welcome, Sophie, thank you for being here.

Sophie Evanoff 3:09

Thank you for having me. We’re counting down the days till Christmas. So

Odette D’Aniello 3:16

your pastry shop looks amazing, everybody. If you go in on YouTube under celebrity gourmet podcast, you could see how beautiful Sophie storefront is. It’s gorgeous. Thank you. Classically French

Sophie Evanoff 3:32

were decorated for Christmas now. So it’s a lot. A lot. funner to come on here.

Odette D’Aniello 3:37

That’s awesome. I can’t wait to visit you in Chicago, maybe a little bit warmer. Yeah. I hear you on that. Well, so I wanted to know, let’s How did you get started in the bakery business?

Sophie Evanoff 3:53

Yeah, I always love to bake. I mean, I can remember as a child, my mom would let me like skip school to bake with the ladies at church, you know, we’d have bake sales. And I always loved it. And I was like, I don’t think I want to pursue this that I didn’t pursue it. I have an undergrad in psychology actually. And that I still like felt the urge to bake and wanting a business. I always thought of having a business so I moved to Chicago to attend the French pastry school. And that’s kind of where it started. So I had a few jobs out of pastry school. And then my former pastry instructor and his wife had started Vinny and they wanted to do something else they were they not were they still are amazing chefs. But ownership you know is not for all chefs. Where I prefer definitely prefer the business ownership side of things than being in the kitchen, you know, and just making things all day. So it was a good fit, you know, they put the business for sale was much smaller. Back then we’ve grown about 500% Wow. So it was two very two small stores. Are they You know, we’ve opened stores closed doors, similar story, but But yeah, I never thought I’d be in retail, retail baking, that’s for sure. I thought maybe wholesale, maybe something large manufacturing, but here

Odette D’Aniello 5:11

we are. I want to know your your, your path towards deciding the type of business model. First of all, how do you how did you fund the purchase? Did you have,

Sophie Evanoff 5:25

I had I had family help. So they, my dad was pretty supportive. So he helped initially. And then we started off what grew us was wholesale actually. So initially, it was very small, wholesale, very small retail, but what really took us off was wholesale. And we did a lot of wholesale for a very long time. And then when COVID hit, so there’s no wholesale, you know, there’s no parties, hotels, restaurants, nothing’s going on. And then I was able to focus on just retail, and their retail grew tremendously when I wasn’t stretched, and I wasn’t bogged down with all these wholesale accounts and stores, and then we just, we were stretched. So then we realized, you know, if you I mean, they say right, where you where you focus on is kind of what grows. So it helped tremendously. So that’s what stopped our wholesale business, and we focused on retail. And that’s kind of what we’ve been doing. Well, you had four locations. Yeah, we had four. So we had two that weren’t doing very well. We closed one in 2019. Right at the end of the year. Other store we closed right when the pandemic started, because there was no way we you know, there’s like there’s no way we’re gonna be able to sustain restores one was at a train station, so that was automatically shut down. Rather than to try and operate to storefronts during the pandemic, there was just no way. So we and who knows, you know, no one knew what was going to happen. So we concentrated on one store, and just put all our resources here to stay afloat. And we did. We started making lunches, we don’t do lunches or anything savor we started making lunches for healthcare workers, ranches, charged companies, and people who wanted to sponsor lotions, basically, at cost. You know, I just wanted to keep my employees and just, you know, get some cash flow. That was it. Yes, that kept us afloat, for quite a bit in the beginning.

Odette D’Aniello 7:24

Wow. And so what did you do with all the wholesale? Did you Did you deliver to wholesale direct? Or was it good? Yeah.

Sophie Evanoff 7:32

So a new font? I mean, I think everybody, I mean, we’re, this is my 12 year, so everyone kind of finds their niche, you know, we found certain industries work much better for us. So for instance, hotels are difficult for us, because hotels get pop ups, you know, and then they’re calling you last minute for orders. And it was hard to plan production and be efficient. So catering companies are great, because they’re usually there things are planned out, you generally get the orders in advance. So that helps, right. And restaurants are tough to for us anyway, the way we do things. Because restaurants will place their orders at midnight, you know, based on what they sell out that night. So, right. So we stopped that. So just just trying to streamline even for my own mental mental sanity to you know, I really learned less is more like that is definitely kind of how I approach things now. And it’s helped so much.

Odette D’Aniello 8:28

That’s amazing. So what did you do with your staff? Did you have like a separate staff for wholesale retail? It

Sophie Evanoff 8:33

was all Yeah, it was all one production team that did everything, but our retail, like doubled during the pandemic.

Odette D’Aniello 8:38

Sophie Evanoff 8:40

and with all the as we all know, the rising costs, you know, trying to keep maintain wholesale margins, and still trying to make money is really difficult. And then you know, so it just didn’t make sense.

Odette D’Aniello 8:51

So do you What’s your specialty?

Sophie Evanoff 8:56

French macarons.

Odette D’Aniello 8:59

Oh,and those are those who you? You retail?

Sophie Evanoff 9:04

We do? Yeah, we retail everything. We do very little wholesale. Now there’s few customers will we still work with? We stopped completely and then very little now.

Odette D’Aniello 9:15

Wow. And you’re and you say you have more time? Probably?

Sophie Evanoff 9:21

I do have more time? I mean, not not this month, but in general. In general, yeah. And I’m not running around to four stores. It just it just makes for a much more productive day.

Odette D’Aniello 9:34

What do you what is your day look like? I

Sophie Evanoff 9:37

typically comes from one of our stores has our main production kitchen for both of the stores. So I generally am stationed here, that’s where my office is. And then the other store I’ll pop in a few times a week we rotate. The managers rotate. But that one’s in a train station. So it’s not a full out store. We just send product. But I’m no longer in touch community events, so things so.

Odette D’Aniello 10:03

So it looks like you have a really robust passion for contributing to community. Can we tell? Can you tell us more about that?

Sophie Evanoff 10:12

Yeah, I honestly, it’s just been kind of how I was raised. I think my both of my parents are really community driven, you know, they’ve always tried to give back whatever they could. And so I just, I grew up around that. And that’s just how I am. And so I always knew, like, when I had a business, that would be a huge, huge part of it. And we’re here, I always say like, We’re here because of the community. So I don’t ever take that for granted. I mean, you just can’t. So especially nowadays, too, I think. Absolutely.

Odette D’Aniello 10:43

And it helps. And go ahead. The

Sophie Evanoff 10:46

team enjoys it. We just every year for Thanksgiving, we do a donation of pi program, we just donated 300 pies. Wow, two charities. So yeah, that’s every year. So we do, we try and do a lot and we try to have fun with it. You know, it’s and do what we can because my mom always said to like, every little bit helps. So maybe I’m not writing huge checks. But if I can donate 10 pies, and I’m going to donate 10. Right.

Odette D’Aniello 11:14

Right, right. That’s beautiful. So what tell me like, What are the your next, like, do you have like any awesome projects that you’re looking forward to?

Sophie Evanoff 11:26

No, we’re kind of, we’re restabilizing a little bit, we’re gonna see what new retail things we want to do here. But just, you know, getting better, that’s our goal every day to get better, be better do better, you know, work smarter. That’s, that’s, I think, our constant struggle with owning a small business. There’s always things we can improve on.

Odette D’Aniello 11:49

So being a small business owner, I know, we’re always trying to be better and do like things more efficiently. But there’s a driver, there’s usually an internal driver for that, like, what’s your internal, what drives you?

Sophie Evanoff 12:03

i On most days, I have to say, it’s, it’s the team and the customers, of course, you know, minus the issues that we it really is because, I mean, when you when you have a good team, and teams go up and down, right, like when they’re when they’re solid, and everyone gets along, and they’re having fun, like, when I can walk upstairs, our kitchen is upstairs, and everyone’s doing their work, but they’re having fun, and they’re laughing and they’re enjoying it. And you know, and they look forward to coming work the next day. Like, that’s, that’s huge. You know, it’s not, they’re not dreading it. And as you know, we’re creative. So to work in a bakery, they’re gonna have a sense of creativity, and you need to make sure that’s, that’s fueled, and it’s just fulfilled. So that definitely is important to me, and we’d like to have fun and goof around. So it’s, it’s a fun atmosphere. But the customers too, when you see little kids come in, and they get so excited when they see all the macarons. And we usually will give kids a cookie or we have stickers, I generally always have something to give the kids. So just like the littlest thing can just put a smile on somebody’s face and just change their day, then people it’s, you don’t you don’t think that but it really changed her day. Yeah.

Odette D’Aniello 13:17

And that’s just that’s a, you think it’s, it’s a small impact, but it’s a big impact. Somebody could be having a really bad day. And that’s what’s great about owning a bakery, especially like a beautiful bakery like yours. So, you know, just walking into a place that’s, you know, with food that’s made with care just changes the whole, the whole experience of it, you know? And I mean, I

Sophie Evanoff 13:42

think so too. I know, people have said to when the team is happy, it translates in the food, like, the food looks better. It tastes better. I mean that, you know, there’s energy behind it. So it definitely carries through, and then the customers feel it too. They know if they walk into a place and everyone’s happy or they walk in, and then yeah, so Well,

Odette D’Aniello 14:03

it’s not easy to keep a creative team happy. So tell me what you do to feed creativity but yet get the work done.

Sophie Evanoff 14:12

Yeah, um, we we do. Like I said, we like to have fun. I keep it really light here. I don’t want to say like, we’re a bunch of kids, but that’s kind of how I think. Yeah, like, right, this is the first time I’ve ever done this. Actually, we have holiday spirit days, this month, and I’m giving like a $50 gift card to the person who we vote has like the best. So we just did holiday socks and we have like ugly sweaters pajama day. Oh, yeah, we do themed birthday parties here. I mean, like themed. I mean, like kid themes. Like it’s kind of a joke to like, we’ll pick a theme to surprise the birthday person. So we’ve had dinosaurs and, you know, Disney princesses and we’re all adults, you know, but I feel like even as adults, we still like those things. We’re just too embarrassed to actually do. So And then we, you know, every time menu development, we make sure to get the whole team involved too. So it’s not just management team to try and get input, if anyone has ideas. And sometimes people don’t want to contribute, and that’s fine. But as long as I think it’s it’s an option, and it’s out there, so they know they can if they want to. How big is your team? The kitchen is 13.

Odette D’Aniello 15:21

Okay. And then front end? Yeah.

Sophie Evanoff 15:24

Yeah. As another with both stores is another 12?

Odette D’Aniello 15:27

Both 13. Yeah, so that’s a good, that’s a good size to be able to have a fun time gets a bit more complicated when there’s more people. Yeah, that’s

Sophie Evanoff 15:38

when we had four stores and stretched and so many people it was, it was challenging.

Odette D’Aniello 15:43

That’s what yeah, that’s it’s that is the that’s so true. Yeah. For what are your plans for the future? Do you plan it expanding? Are you? Well, I don’t know. I

Sophie Evanoff 15:57

mean, right now, I would say no more expansion, I think, because I did so much too soon. So now it’s just stabilizing. And I think because the business community is so much changing, and especially in Chicago. This is not a city for businesses, especially small businesses. So, you know, I think it’s, I kind of have a little more conservative mindset now. Just to keep doing what we’re doing, and doing it really well and kind of see what the future holds. I mean, I have nothing, that I’m dead set on, like, Oh, more stores, let’s do this. Let’s do that. But I think there’s something about just being stable and content and, and just keep moving forward.

Odette D’Aniello 16:38

I think that’s so true, you know, with being a small business owner, and maybe it might be the media or what we read about its business people, it’s like, oh, scale, scale scale, bigger and bigger. Now, what was your experience when you did that?

Sophie Evanoff 16:56

It was not well, I like we I mean, and that’s I agree with you because I feel like so many business conferences and things like go to it is that’s all they focused on scaling funding do this. No one ever talks about just be where you are, like, be happy and content where you are and like, see what what can flourish. But we did two stores, I had one on the south side of Chicago in Hyde Park, I think the location is what kind of hurt us it was tucked away. But manage when you when you’re as an owner, not at every store all day, things happen. I had stealing. You know, I had people locking up the store and walking away, they punch in and then I could get customers call and say, Oh, no one’s here. You’re supposed to be open. Even with cameras and everything that you know that you do, you still can’t monitor it. 24/7. But just going through that construction, you know, I don’t know anything about construction. So building out stores was a whole other animal. Staffing, the issues, and then each store is not delivering the service, or the level of quality that I would want. Yeah, then you’re just pulled. So everything’s mediocre versus having one great store. You’ve got four mediocre stores.

Odette D’Aniello 18:06

Right? And now you’re dealing with mediocrity, which costs money because now you’re like, just money’s just going in and out. Yeah. And I Yeah,

Sophie Evanoff 18:20

and we were I mean, it was a little premature. I think, you know, our systems and processes weren’t fully set up to handle that. But even so I think, even if you’re structured, everything is working really well. It’s a different mindset, I think, to handle that kind of an operation. And I realized that’s not the size of operation I want, like I prefer something smaller and more controllable. Do

Odette D’Aniello 18:45

you have a partner? Or is it just you do you have?

Sophie Evanoff 18:48

It’s just me. My dad is still a really good business adviser. He’s not here, though. He’s in Michigan. And he’s significantly older. He’s retired. So if he listens to this, and you heard me say, significantly older, he’s gonna get mad.

Odette D’Aniello 19:01

What was your mentors are? In addition to your dad, do

Sophie Evanoff 19:05

you have others? I do. I’ve met several really good mentors here in Chicago just for the business community, the Chicagoland chamber, or the Lincoln Park chamber. So I do value the chambers a lot.

Odette D’Aniello 19:17

And you can call on them. I mean, that’s the value, mentor. You know, it’s like I was not,

Sophie Evanoff 19:22

I think, you know, you mentioned RPIA earlier, the gain of RPIA is the other bakery owners. You know, it’s not, you know, they’re set up to be, you know, buying power, but it’s really just bouncing ideas off of other owners. And when they’re in different cities, you’re not competitors. So you guys, we can be totally honest, like, absolutely. So,

Odette D’Aniello 19:46

what I love about the bakery business, though, it’s not cutthroat.

Sophie Evanoff 19:50

I agree.

Odette D’Aniello 19:51

I’ve been in this business for a while. And it is it is a very friendly business because bakers don’t necessarily have pretense you know. Like, I don’t have to go wear makeup and fix my hair. And yeah, I can. I can be in jeans and a fleece like, all day of the week and it’s okay.

Sophie Evanoff 20:12

Yeah, you’re seeing this is generally what I look like. And I know makeup hairs back obviously because I’m in the kitchen. T-shirt. I’m good with that. Like, I don’t know what I do if I had an office job where I had to be like, business casual every day.

Odette D’Aniello 20:25

I know, I was telling you that to my daughter goes, Do you know how much money I have saved throughout my life? Wearing makeup, and now I’ve stopped coloring my hair. It’s like I stopped coloring my hair. I don’t know how many years ago. I’m like, that’s a lot of time money. Yeah,

Sophie Evanoff 20:43

that’s a good point. I like that. I’m gonna look at it like that now.

Odette D’Aniello 20:46

And so well, what I love about RPIA. And this is this is a shout out to this organization to is that when you do have a question, it’s really important if you’re going to be in any industry, not just the baking industry, but in any industry find like minded people who are in the same path. This is what I’ve just learned recently. It’s like, you know, we hire a lot of consultants. And I just realized, I’m like, You’re not even you don’t understand where I’m coming from? Because you don’t know. But yet, you know, another big builder does. Yeah, and I feel too, like, We’re such a

Sophie Evanoff 21:26

niche market. Because like, everyone just puts food like food business owners together. There’s groups here that are like, you know, women, food owners, and different things. But a restaurant and a bakery really have nothing in common. Except customers and employees. Yeah. So like, you can’t really talk to them with your nitty gritty and ask questions, because it’s just, they operate differently. So it’s so important to have, you know, other bakery owners, so you can talk to, right,

Odette D’Aniello 21:53

and I opened, like some of the emails and just like, oh, we I had a question about that, too. And it’s very specific to our industry, say, how, you know, what’s the conversion for whatever recipe are in and I love the whole recipe sharing. So if you have like, it’s what other industry? Can you just go on an email and say, Can I have a recipe for, you know, such and such a pie? Like, yeah, you know, people give you all kinds of stuff. You’re just like, Wait, okay, great. Thank you so much. You know, is the you know, if anybody out there who’s listening is looking to get into an industry that the bakery industry is a friendly place. I agree. No, I’m sure that you can reach out to me, you can reach out to Sophie. And we can tell you nitty gritty of what you need to get done to to be successful.

Sophie Evanoff 22:44

And I think we all know, too, if you’re in this industry, you’re passionate about it. Because it’s a hard industry, you know, like this is it’s hard work, the hours everything about it. And if you’re you know, owning a small business, just that it’s that much more difficult. So if we’re, you’re you’re in it, you love it regardless, you know, so there’s this sense of general passion that we all understand that we all have. So

Odette D’Aniello 23:09

yeah, yeah, absolutely. I love it. I love equipment, I love all kinds of stuff about the bakery business. I, there’s, there’s, it’s and the people really just need it. And this is what inspired me to do this podcast, because I knew that every conversation would be heartfelt and, you know, there’s no, there’s no pretense. This is what I keep saying. And I love how, like you are just frank about what you’re doing your you know, what you’ve learned, so that the next person who goes into this business maybe can reconsider scaling, like what does scale look like, and what kind of priorities do you want in your life? Yeah,

Sophie Evanoff 23:54

but that’s when you’re, I mean, when I was younger, that is kind of the mindset I had to because I would look at people and like, what you don’t want to open more stores, you know, just in my head, like, what you don’t want to grow as big as you can grow. Like, you just think that that’s what you’re, in some ways, I think that’s what the business community trains you to think, Oh, if you start a business, the goal is to grow as big as you can grow, you know, like, just more and more and more and more and more. So that’s kind of what I thought too. Like, I thought it was weird that somebody didn’t want to grow or someone doesn’t want to do all these things. But now I’m like, okay, I get it. Like, that’s not what it’s about. Like there’s different levels, and different things that make people happy. I mean, if that’s what makes you happy, great, but sometimes it doesn’t. So

Odette D’Aniello 24:34

how about outside of the bakery? What do you do? What do you have any interests you have hobbies?

Sophie Evanoff 24:38

I honestly, I don’t have very many hobbies. I think now I’m just kind of having more time I like I like to travel. So I probably do at least try and do two trips a year. Generally, one of them is like a meditation retreat. I do enjoy meditation now. Yeah, I do women’s retreats quite frequently, actually.

Odette D’Aniello 25:01

I do meditation retreats? Yeah, I

Sophie Evanoff 25:03

love it. So last year I went to Hawaii, we went to go, we went went to Oahu was for my 40th birthday. That was my like, treat to myself. So it was a week long women’s retreat. And it was great. The women usually I don’t stay in touch with women, I meet on retreats, but this group we’re like, bonded. So we still we meet up. We met in Nashville over the summer. So our goal was to meet up every six months just to do like a check in

Odette D’Aniello 25:28

what meditation do you do? Um, it just,

Sophie Evanoff 25:32

it’s all sorts. I don’t really do the yoga retreats. So it’s more like the energy thing. So this was she had guided meditations this different, you know, self improvement thing,

Odette D’Aniello 25:44

you know, always. I love you and I can go I guess when I do the silent retreats. Oh, I’ve never done what I that’s something I want to do, actually. Oh, seven days of no talking. Wow. The best ever. Okay, I might try that. Yes. And I just did a another retreat this past this past month. Actually, I just did one. So that in Orlando. Oh, cool. Okay. Yeah. And I want to take my husband to another to another retreat. So I I just like, meditating.

Sophie Evanoff 26:24

I do too. Yeah, do it enough. But when I do it, it’s just you just feel recharged so much better.

Odette D’Aniello 26:34

That’s awesome. That’s amazing. I love it. I just, I knew I had to ask that question. Because like, there’s, you know, when you’re in an industry like ours, it takes a lot to stay grounded.

Sophie Evanoff 26:46

Yeah. And I can’t say I’m always proud of it. For sure. It’s a roll. It’s definitely like, some days are much better than others. But But I keep trying like that sometimes December. I’m like, well, whatever. I just forget about December. January.

Odette D’Aniello 27:03

That’s awesome. Well, I I’m so excited that you and I are like we have that common. So that’s very cool. I have to send you where I go and you can throw because I haven’t gone to a women’s retreat. I would love to do

Sophie Evanoff 27:16

that. Yeah, other third grade, I’ve done a few. And depends who leads them to I have a lady in Chicago that I work with pretty regularly. So she does retreats all over actually all over the world. So if sometimes if our schedules align or you know, it works out, I’ll try and take her retreats. So it’s more like who who’s leading them? If I’m uncomfortable with them if I know them, if you know I feel called to do it. So

Odette D’Aniello 27:39

That’s awesome. Well, I’m so excited. So that’s the now I know.

Sophie Evanoff 27:45

We need a women-owned bakeries retreat.

Odette D’Aniello 27:52

Like literally re-treats. We can we can retreat and then we eat treats. How’s that? Oh my god. Call it “Retreat. Eat treats.” Yeah. That’d be fun. Yeah, it’d be fun. I have a new venue in Tucson, Arizona. Maybe we can even come here and visit. Oh, yeah. That’d be amazing. I have more information. It’s called Himaya Garden. Oh, cool. Yep. Yeah.

Sophie Evanoff 28:20

I love Arizona.

Odette D’Aniello 28:22

That’s awesome. Especially when it’s super snowy. So one more question for you. So if you were to talk to the person, well, if you were to talk to your past self, like your younger self, what would you tell her?

Sophie Evanoff 28:41

Well, like in my high school age, I would say listen to your parents, because I didn’t. They said go to business school, get an undergrad in business. I said no, I’m not doing that. Probably what helped me now? No, I think kind of what I learned in the pandemic, like, less is more like I wish I knew that going in. Because I you know, I think it would have been a lot different. And, you know, we all make sacrifices as business owners. So just, you know, I think even health wise, you know, owning a bakery, isn’t that helpful for your figure? When you neglect yourself? So I would have definitely put more emphasis on my self care, you know, at a younger age because it’s all connected. Because if you’re not happy and healthy, then your business is not happy and healthy.

Odette D’Aniello 29:36

Right? So like, absolutely. Well, is there any other thing that you want to chit chat about? Because I’m now super excited that we’re gonna do our retreats?

Sophie Evanoff 29:48

Yeah, no, I’m excited. I’m ready for a retreat.

Odette D’Aniello 29:53

Retreat and Eat treats. Yeah. Women-owned bakery owners. retreat and eat treats. Yeah, that would be great either to actually do this. Okay, so our listeners, I know that now we’re kind of going, planning our own fun time. But what’s amazing about owning a bakery is that when you do business, your business trips and you do conferences, you literally go and visit all kinds of bakeries. Yes. So with RPIA, there’s an annual trip. And you can go and visit 10 bakeries, and they will show you around your back end, and will, how they do things they show you all their procedures and recipes and all kinds of stuff is so fun. It’s really fun. And that, you know, I know it’s a hard industry, but there’s a lot of good people behind it. There’s a lot of people with heart that you can meet. You know, the thing that you share passion.

Sophie Evanoff 30:58

The first time I went to Paris was 2017 with RPA.

Odette D’Aniello 31:04

You remember that with a cruise, right? No,

Sophie Evanoff 31:07

No, that this was just Paris. So I’ve never, you know, I own a French bakery. I’ve never been to France. So this trip kind of just came up. And I was like, You know what, I’m gonna do this. I’m just like there’s so many patisseries that I, I watch. And I admire and I follow when I was like, I I just wanted to go like finally to see it. So, Rick had planned this trip, and I met them at the IBIE Show in 2016. Yes, he was advertising the Paris trip. And I was like, That’s it, I’m going. So I just committed and I went, and those people that I went on the trip with it was a small group. I mean, we’re still good friends to this day, like we share a bond that we’ve never, you know, that I don’t have with anybody else. And all bakery owners. You know, we can text each other help each other out. Awesome, right. And then I like to travel as you know, like you said, you have a breeze when you travel. So you’re with a group of people who also want to do that.

Odette D’Aniello 32:02

Yes. Oh, my gosh, it is so amazing. And like, and then you can get to the back end of places. Yeah. You know, the I totally. I would love to learn more about your trip to Paris, because it’s just, it is so amazing how much people love pastry there. Yeah.

Sophie Evanoff 32:21

They appreciate. Yeah, they appreciate it too. A lot more than here. So yes.

Odette D’Aniello 32:26

And they have a long history of pastry. So every little town and every little, you know, place has their own specialty this and that. And they and people traveled to go there. But we don’t have the US have that history yet. But yeah, I would. I would. Hopefully, we’ll have we’ll have a chance to do that during the trip like that. That’d be amazing. Yeah. Well, I have to see you and the visit you visit me and coma or Arizona and then I’ll when I go to Chicago, I’ll make sure I

Sophie Evanoff 33:00

Yeah, please do.

Odette D’Aniello 33:01

Then we can. We can plan out our retreat and eat treats.

Sophie Evanoff 33:06

Yeah. I love it. Yeah.

Odette D’Aniello 33:10

All right. Well, thank you. Thanks. Thanks for being on the Celebrity Gourmet Podcast, Sophie. Thank you.

Sophie Evanoff 33:16

Thank you.

Outro 33:20

Thanks for listening to the Celebrity Gourmet Podcast. We’ll see you again next time. And be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.