Continental Baking (National) has listed 11 companies who will be showcased in their sponsored programme ‘Bold Ones’ to recognize outstanding new Jamaican manufacturers. Sunday Finance will feature a different company for each of the next several weeks.

Safiya Burton-Chisolm used to come home from her former job as an executive with financial services First Global, immediately head to the kitchen and start baking. “If when you’re stressed out by the challenges of the job,” her husband once remarked, “you come home and bake, why not just make baking your full-time job?”

She took his advice and plunged into the world of entrepreneurship. Safiya says that she had been exploiting her passion for baking from her high school days, carrying her in-demand cakes and baked goods in her schoolbag to meet the cravings of her class mates, faculty and friends.

But this new move required a more serious approach, so she went back to school at the French Culinary Institute in New York then interned with the legendary Gramercy Tavern, also in New York.

Before she opened her first outlet in the Sovereign Centre in January of 2008 – a second opened more recently in Manor Park Plaza – one of her contacts, a university professor, scoffed that no one would buy her fancy French creations as the “rock cake and bulla” dependency was firmly entrenched.

She proved that prophecy unfounded and Pastry Passions has been on a growth path ever since. “Until the recession hit in January of this year, we recorded significant increases in volume,” she says. The enterprise is still steadily carving out its sugary niche in the market, although Safiya admits to having misread the true appeal of her products. “I simply didn’t realize that men had an even “bigger” sweet tooth than women,” she laughs.

Those appetites are satisfied with a range of goodies that includes an Oreo chocolate cheesecake, a Hummingbird cake (banana, coconut and pineapple) and banana and Nutella crepes. Black forest cake though, remains her biggest seller.

She does have her share of challenges. The humidity inherent in a tropical climate, she says, can frustrate even a persistently experimental pastry chef as she is. Another challenge is bringing recruits up to speed and changing prevailing attitudes to pastry-making. “What we’ve done to answer the personnel issue,” she explains, “is to develop a “core group” of adaptors who then pass on the principles to the others who have come along more recently. In return for their dedication and adaptability, they receive profit sharing and other incentives.”

This sort of informal mentoring is augmented by continuous training. Safiya keeps up to date on developments in the industry through copious reading, checking websites and attending industry trade shows. She also applies her analytical financial background to the business with daily and weekly monitoring of various metrics vital to the enterprise such as use of material and labour costs.

A new and welcome challenge for Safiya is how to expand Pastry Passions to meet the ever-growing demand without compromising consistency and quality of the product. “We are looking to establish a central production facility,” she says, “to increase our capacity and maintain quality control.” She is also planning to acquire at least one other bakery business with a good location and valuable customer base.

With awareness of her line of sweet treats increasing and big name suppliers knocking on her door, one challenge remains: now that she’s established her baking business, how does she respond to the stress and challenges of this job?

“Easy,” she replies. “I go home and bake.”

Photo: Delicious Display

Caption: Safiya Burton-Chisolm (centre) of Pastry Passions, flanked by two of her team members, showcase some of the company’s signature products.