Wizzy Bakeshop

A dessert brand I founded and ran for 2 years 2 months, with real revenue as the feedback loop

Role: Founder
Scope: Product / Operations / CX
Duration: 2022–2024

58%

Returning customers (POS data)

I started it because I wanted to share something I love, and I learned how to run it by being tested every day — by money and by customers.

What I Built

The moment a dessert becomes a gift, the buyer and the consumer are no longer the same person. The recipient eats it; the buyer judges the packaging. So I redesigned the package, and it led to Lunar New Year gift-set pre-orders.

A tray of cupcakes topped with cream, strawberries and chocolate chips — Cupcakes — the 70/30 menu system

Sandwiches packed into takeout boxes for a bulk order — Sandwiches in bulk — group orders

Striped gift boxes and a wrapped holiday cake on a plaid cloth — Gift packaging — the holiday gift set

Brand Graphics

Poster for the sandwich sets — soup set, coffee set and couple set with their prices

Poster for the sandwich menu — club sandwich, jambon salt bread and the weekly sandwich

Poster for the holiday cakes — triple berry summer cake, fruits flower cake and the weekly cake

Poster for the weekly soups — pumpkin, potato and corn

Weekly menu posters I designed

Cases

The 70/30 rule behind 58% returning customers

Observation: A neighborhood shop has a fixed pool of customers. On the same menu alone, reasons to visit run out.
Judgment: Let the fixed menu carry trust and the new items carry novelty — 70% fixed, 30% new, every week.
Action: I put out a new item every week based on seasonal ingredients, and on closing days I posted two candidates for the next week’s menu to an Instagram vote so customers chose it themselves.
Result: 58% of all customers became returning customers (POS data). The confidence that “if Wizzy makes it, this one will be good too” turned a random new item into something to look forward to.

The Butter Apple failure — a good product was not a product that sells

Situation: “Butter Apple,” an homage to pineapple cake. Both the look and the taste had real care in them, and I was sure it would do well.
Reality: The process was handmade, so production efficiency was low, and it sold poorly because the size was small for the price.
Experiment: On the hypothesis that “a taste is what leads to a purchase,” I ran a sampling service. Customers really did come back to buy after tasting — but this time I hadn’t prepared the quantity.
Lesson: How finished a product is and how it holds up on productivity and price structure were separate problems. The product was not the good thing itself — it was everything up to the structure that could make it and sell it.

The salt bread dilemma — I judged it by the basket, not by unit margin

Situation: In a pastry shop that sells only same-day, salt bread was low-priced and labor-heavy — on margin alone, an item to cut.
Observation: But customers who came for the salt bread bought other desserts along with it.
Judgment: I decided to judge an item’s value by the whole basket it sells with, not by its unit margin. The salt bread stayed.
Bonus: Leftover days followed the same standard — I never ran discounts. The idea that “come late and it’s cheap” eats away at a brand. Instead, near closing I would add one more to a customer’s bag: “This one is new — it’s a gift today.” So that surplus stock read not as a negative signal but as a good feeling on the way out.

Absorbing a cost increase

When chocolate prices jumped, I didn’t fight the price tag. Because the menu changed every week, items with a high cost share could be swapped for others naturally — the menu system absorbed the price resistance.

Traces of Operation

The empty shop during fit-out, with the display case being installed — Setting up the space

The shop in daylight, menu posters taped to the window over an autumn street — Open, in daylight

The lit storefront at night, dressed with Halloween decorations — A season, at night

Reading a pastry reference book at the counter in the evening light — At work behind the counter

Takeaway

The customers were users, the revenue was the metric, and each week’s menu was an experiment. Before I learned the word research, I was doing it every day at the register.

I wrapped up the operation when my leave of absence for founding the business ran out and I returned to school. Closing the shop left me with two conclusions.

One — the wall of scale. This shop’s regulars were made by my own eye for detail, my hands, and fine-grained service, and that is exactly why it could not scale. Value that stops working without me had to be rebuilt as structure rather than as a person in order to last.

Two — the limits of the product category. Dessert disappears after a day; no product is more constrained by storage and distribution. The next product had to be the opposite — software doesn’t disappear once it’s made, has no distribution limit, and can be built from a person’s thinking with little capital. And the cycle of making something quickly, putting it out, and watching the response was exactly the feeling of releasing a new item every week.

So I changed products. I now solve the same question on a screen — making a good experience something that works for anyone as structure, not as one person’s talent. That is the product design I do.

The project this operating instinct led to — Operator →