Social media success takes Phat Ash Bakes from home business to brick-and-mortar

Ashley D’Acunto, the co-owner of Phat Ash Bakes, suggests she has constantly enjoyed baking for enjoyment — feeding her husband, Israel Erazo, and her co-personnel — but when the pandemic hit she all of a sudden uncovered herself with additional time on her fingers.

“I was performing at Lululemon in Winter Park and the keep shut for COVID. And it gave me time to, you know, actually make a web site and aim,” D’Acunto said “And then it just truly took off you absolutely everyone was on their cellphone. All people was quarantined, investing time on social media and Instagram, scrolling and so it definitely just labored out for us in that sense.”

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D’Acunto actually credits her coworkers at Lululemon for pushing her toward setting up the small business with her partner. 1 employee in specific truly gave her the nudge she wanted.

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“Maddie is my friend from Lululemon who established up my 1st bake sale, she designed me my initially Phat Ash shirt, she named organization. I mean this female is extraordinary just since she’s a fantastic human being,” D’Acunto explained. “She was like, ‘I know you like to bake. You should really actually just make a corporation referred to as Phat Ash Bakes.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God, you are appropriate. I’m not even gonna modify it. It’s great.’”

That bake sale was D’Acunto’s initial foray into cookie income, but when the pandemic shut down a great deal of the region, Phat Ash shifted to Instagram.

“People would slide into our DMS, spot an buy with us and we would meet them in the Goal parking great deal subsequent to our property,” D’Acunto reported. “And then we had been like, ‘OK, this form of seems to be a small shady. And possibly we should really have a true site, alternatively of meeting in this parking good deal and handing a brown bag in excess of to these strangers.’ And so then we experienced a pickup area, we built it far more formal.”

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Her social media achievement continued to swell. Now, with additional than 17,000 Instagram followers, Phat Ash has moved into Orlando’s Trendy Mills 50 District. The enterprise shares the place at 912 N. Mills with Grilled Cheezus.

“We are positioned in the back again of the developing. So, type of, like you could pull up into our discreet area,” D’Acunto said. “There is not a good deal of signage, which is intentional and so it is like you really feel like ‘Yes, I identified it.’”

D’Acunto reported she currently has much more than 200 flavors for her cookies which get rotated in and out weekly and seasonally. There is just one flavor that is always presented, the chocolate chip cookie.

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“One, you simply cannot go improper with chocolate chip,” she explained. “Two, I assume you can always base how good cookies are from a person off their chocolate chip, because if they make a excellent chocolate chip, then I have religion that the rest will be excellent too. And the last cause is we do a lot of charity and neighborhood perform. We donate $1 of every single chocolate chip cookie that we promote at the end of the month to a distinct charity.”

Phat Ash has donated to a wide range of charities together with Zebra Coalition, Upcoming Step Orlando and SALT Outreach.

In the newest episode of Florida Foodie, D’Acunto talks about how her business enterprise has developed and where the inspiration for her cookies will come from.

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Make sure you adhere to our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can obtain Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Fb and Twitter and you can test out her children’s e-book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”

Florida Foodie is a bi-weekly podcast from WKMG and Graham Media that will take a nearer glance at what we eat, how we try to eat it and the effects that has on us here in Florida and for every person, all over the place. Come across new episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or where ever you obtain your beloved podcasts.