Baking Sweet Memories for Business Success

They have been PayPal customers for 20+ years, utilizing PayPal Complete Payments for online purchases. They also use Zettle and invoicing for events that help expand their business.

Tell us about yourself and why you started the business.

I grew up in my family neighborhood café and I was drawn to baking in my spare time. To pursue this, I applied and got a scholarship to attend the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY. After graduating, I returned to Atlanta and opened my own business to share the baked goods that I grew up loving.

The Sweet Auburn Bread Company is a tribute to the desserts of my childhood, and indeed many people's childhoods. We specialize in southern and southern-inspired desserts, aiming to create a place where we can bake memories. Our baked goods feature local ingredients such as sweet potatoes. We offer homemade pound cakes, banana breads, cookies, as well as seasonal items like peach pies and blackberry pumpkin pies.

What PayPal products do you use, and how do they help you run the business?

When we started about 20 years ago, we used PayPal at checkout right from the start. When we pivoted from a single shop to multiple locations and popup shops it made things easy.

Since last fall, we have used PayPal Complete Payments for online. We use the Zettle terminals for our pop-ups. Since Zettle uses the PayPal dashboard, it’s easy to train new staff. We also use PayPal Working Capital, which is so helpful and easy to use. Finally, we’ve started using invoicing for events. Having everything all in one place makes things simple for us to manage.

What have been some of your most memorable milestones or successes from running the business?

Having President Bill Clinton visit our shop in the early days when we were part of his Economic Redevelopment plan for downtown Atlanta... well, this is an amazing memory from the early days of our business. We invented Sweet Potato Cheesecake for his visit and it’s still a big customer favorite.

What have been some of the challenges you faced and how did you overcome them?

We got started in a food court location, which was great for the community but was hard for us to grow. We also needed to find ways to grow our business outside just the store, and being able to do corporate events, marketings and other pop-up events has helped us a lot.

What advice would you give someone considering starting a business?

Figure out ways to make things simple when you can. For example, now that we have Zettle and PayPal checkout, it’s easy to send anyone to a farmers’ market or pop-up event. This also makes it easier for us to hire students from the university; and it’s great to foster a relationship like this with the community.