beginning of coucou bakehouse

how it all started

well hello !

as someone who graduated with literature major but have always dreaded writing for the entirety of college years, i’m absolutely terrified to commit myself to writing regularly, especially when there’s many brilliant writers/bakers who share their thoughts so eloquently in this platform (and i’m gifted at the art of comparing myself to others constantly). but i really wanted a space where i can be more personal and share more details of what happens behind the scenes of coucou—including all the failures and frustrations that don’t get posted on instagram. i also wanted to challenge myself to document the journey of coucou more intentionally. so much has happened over the year, and it’s all kind of a blur. i want to remember better what happened when so i can triumph over all the little steps that coucou took to become what it is now. and who knows? maybe i’ll be documenting my journey of starting a brick and mortar in the near future !

but enough with the rambling. you’re here for the story of coucou’s birth, not justification for yet another newsletter.

so how did it all start?

the dream of having my own bakery goes far back to my high school days, actually, when i used to bake everyday after school and share whatever’s left (sometimes there were none left to share but we don’t talk about that) with my family and friends. considering that no one ever taught me how to bake or that we only had a mini toaster oven in the house, it’s kind of crazy to look back and see myself bake with so much passion. baking quickly became a big part of my identity. when i wasn’t baking, i was either scrolling through pinterest for recipes or watching baking youtube videos (shoutout cupcake jemma and joy of baking !). i even started selling my baked goods during lunch breaks my junior year and earned enough to buy my sister a laptop.

it never occurred to me, however, that i could make baking something more than just a hobby. so i went to college to study literature in the hopes of becoming a high school english teacher. but by the time i reached my last semester of college and completed an internship at a school, those hopes were crushed by the crippling fear of what if’s: ‘what if i’m not qualified? what if i suck at teaching? what if i end up hating it?’ naturally, this fear forced me to think hard about what i really wanted to do. even when i accepted a position at a school and started working there right after graduation, i knew teaching wasn’t my passion. so i started wondering what it’d be like to do something i am confident at & love for a living. weirdly enough, i had full confidence that if i were to start a small business out of baking, i would be good at it. i didn’t have the doubts that i had about being a teacher. just the thought of having my own bakery, even if it started out without a physical space to call it one, gave me so much excitement and joy.

here’s something i wrote in september of 2023 (please ignore how bad the writing is—i realize “not-yet-nonexistent” actually means “existent” which is not what i meant lol):

i held on to this dream and started to bake more often after work. i then wanted a platform to post the pictures, but i knew i wanted a good name and a logo before i make anything public. so, beginning of 2024, i started brainstorming about the name of the bakery, which took longer than i anticipated because i wanted it to be perfect. once i decided that it’ll be “coucou bakehouse,” i created an instagram account and posted for the first time at the end of january. if you’re curious about why i chose the name, you can read the post here:

first post on instagram !

i was working full time at a school back then, so i tried to bake at least 2-3 times a week and have something to post. here’s some of the things i baked at the time:

because i didn’t have the work permit that would allow me to sell goods (in case you didn’t know, international students are limited to work only within the field of their study after graduating), i focused on growing my customer base by giving away free pastries, doing cake slice giveaways, and doing a fundraiser pop up (maybe i can write a separate newsletter with more details about this). i also spent a lot of time just brainstorming what and how i’d sell once i receive the work permit.

i also started accumulating a lot of baking equipments and ingredients so i invested in a home depot shelf to make our one bedroom apartment less cluttered. i’ve bought one more since and to say that they’ve been incredibly helpful would be an understatement.

by the time i received my work permit (through my husband who’s a citizen in the states) in march, i had good amount of followers—enough for me to sell out of a small number of pastry boxes right away. this gave me the confidence to do more and slowly increase the number of items i sell each time, for both pastry boxes and pop ups.

and so… here i am ! i’m now doing coucou full time & trying to figure out what my next step is to expand my tiny bakery while keeping myself sane. it’s absolutely crazy how much support and love i have received over the past 10 months. i had no idea coucou will get so big so quickly—i still get shocked when i see a line of people waiting to buy my baked goods.

here’s a picture of my most recent pop up, where i sold out of 400 items in 1.5 hour. ya’ll are crazy !!!

i have so much more to share, from challenges of doing a pop up bakery alone to what my week of pop up is like. i also want to share bits and pieces of my personal life. i sometimes feel as though coucou is me and i am coucou, and although coucou is such a big part of my life now, i need to remind myself that coucou isn’t the only thing that defines me. but i think i’m starting to ramble again so i’ll end my first post here.

thank you for reading through my disorganized writing. i promise it’ll get better over time. i’d love to know what else you want me to write about as well : )

until next time !

love, joy