From Courtroom to Kitchen: Subarzsweets

It takes a lot to start a business, especially when it means leaving behind an established career in an entirely different field. Doubly so when your new venture has only ever been a hobby.

But that shouldn’t stop anyone from trying, and it didn’t stop Daphne Subarz, the founder of Subarzsweets, LLC.

After 26 years as an attorney, Subarz was inspired to open her own bakery by her daughter’s response to an elementary school project.

“I’ve always believed that anything is possible with hard work, perseverance, and unwavering support. Inspired by my daughter’s project, ‘SuBar – all bars, one bakery’ – I dreamt of one day starting a bakery,” Subarz. “Fears and excuses held me back, but one day my middle daughter questioned me and challenged me to overcome my hesitations. In 2016 I finally took the leap and left my legal career behind.”

Subarz has no training as a baker, just the time she spent making treats for her family. One of her three daughters has food allergies, so she learned to tweak recipes and be creative when it came to the kitchen.

Her initial plans to start a bakery didn’t quite pan out. She marketed herself as such but soon had to pivot to a niche market – corporate gifting.

“I launched as a bakery, and that’s how I marketed myself. About 18 months after launching, I looked at my business and realized how many people were sending my products as gifts,” Subarz said. “I looked at my business that way and thought, ‘Wow, this is a unique product that can be sent as corporate gifts.’ We ship nationwide and don’t need refrigeration, and we can make the package very personal – we include a handwritten note, which no one does anymore.”

That openness to re-evaluating her business was a key to finding success.

Subarz said her early plans for a bakery might have been too much to tackle. She’d been eyeing opening a brick-and-mortar location for walk-in customers but realized later that staying in a digital space was better for her business.

For starters, it’s less overhead cost. She’s only paying to rent a kitchen space, not a storefront. What’s more, she doesn’t have to divide her focus among multiple products – cakes, brownies, cupcakes, etc.

“The product we created, which is kind of a hybrid of a cookie and a biscotti, sells really well, and rather than coming up with a bunch of different products, I just have 21 varieties of the same recipe. It all fits in the same box, with the same packaging and branding, and the shipping is the same,” Subarz said. “And this really is more of an online business. People are going to want to send 200 corporate gifts aren’t going to walk into a bakery and order that way. They’re going to do it online. It’s much easier to sell 300 boxes to one corporate client than one box to 300 walk-in customers.”

Subarz was all in on her business from the start. She left her legal career behind and focused on Subarzsweets as a full-time gig, which she said was “terrifying.”

Her saving grace, she said, was that she didn’t fully realize what she was getting herself into.

“I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and that helped me a little bit. If I decided now to do it all again, knowing what I know about marketing and packaging and networking and everything, it would have been overwhelming,” Subarz said. “Luckily, I didn’t know what’s entailed in running and growing a small business. That helped me because I only had to focus on the next step in front of me.”

Despite her lack of experience as a baker and business owner, when Subarz decided she was in, she went for it.

She pulled on numerous resources to help expand her knowledge. A key milestone was getting accepted to the Goldman Sachs 10000 Small Business Program. Subarz said she learned an incredible amount through that program.

She also registered with the local Small Business Development Center to take advantage of its resources. The center, a local outlet of the federal Small Business Administration, assigned Subarz a mentor who referred her to certification specialists and helped her marketing efforts as well.

There’s that common refrain that if you plan for failure, you’re going to fail – if you’re opening a small business with an eye on a backup plan, you’re going to need it. That wasn’t the case for Subarz.

She said she was pragmatic about how things were going, but she didn’t want to look back later and regret not taking the chance or not fully investing herself in the business.

“I launched in June; I said, let’s see how the rest of the year goes. Then the holidays came around, and it was great, but the beginning of the next year was a bit slow, which (I know now) it always is,” Subarz said. “It’s the slowest quarter, so I did start thinking I should go back to law but decided to give it a few more months. It cycled up again, and by summer, things are picking up, and come September, people are thinking about their corporate holiday gifts. It all goes through cycles.”

The knowledge that her market had a natural ebb and flow between busy and slow periods is something she would’ve missed out on without investing the time to see the business through.

That said, there are still moments in the slow periods that get to her a little.

“I have that internal discussion and remind myself I’ve had eight years of slow periods at the beginning of the year, and it’s going to turn around. There’s so much to do and to learn with a small business, I keep myself motivated by learning new things, taking courses, or just networking. It’s a lot of networking,” Subarz said.

Standing on this side of entrepreneurialism, Subarz said she’s still occasionally surprised when she looks at her success.

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She never thought she wanted to run a small business, but seeing how much she’s learned and realizing how resilient she can be is amazing, she said. While being her own boss is great, she said, there are other, invisible benefits to opening a small business, like having the time to connect with others who have been through their own entrepreneurial journey, and having shared experiences.

“I have a lot more respect for people who run small businesses. I’ve also learned a lot of small business owners have great stories behind why they’re doing what they’re doing. When I was practicing law I wouldn’t ever have the time to stop and listen to why people are doing what they’re doing and what they’re passionate about,” Subarz said.

Entrepreneurship can come from anywhere. Small business owners aren’t exclusively people who’ve dreamt about being their own boss their whole lives. Sometimes it’s spotting a gap in the market or having an idea and running with it. Sometimes it just takes someone to say, “What’s stopping you from doing it?”

Your Turn

The coronavirus pandemic showed, and Subarz can attest to this, that things will always go wrong, and there’s never a perfect time to make the leap. You just have to go for it and have faith that hard work, a little bit of luck, and an open mind will lead to success, even if it doesn’t look like you thought it would. If you’re facing a similar crossroads in your life, take inspiration from her story and dare to take the next step towards your entrepreneurial dreams. What’s holding you back? Share your thoughts and aspirations in the comments below.

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