Bakery in a Box – Mila Glynn

Mila pitched her business, Bakery in a Box, on Colorado and Company.

Mila Glynn makes baking a breeze!  Bakery in a Box creates themed boxes of pre-measured ingredients delivered right to your doorstep. Themes include birthday, winter, and Valentine’s Day.  Mila attributes part of her success to the Be Your Own Boss day-camp she participated in last summer at Young Americans Center for Financial Education.

Watch Mila’s segment on Colorado & Company, and learn more about her below.

Question: Tell me a little bit about you – name, age, how long you’ve been an entrepreneur?

Answer: My full name is Amelia Glynn but my parents knew when I was born that my nickname was going to be Mila, so everyone calls me Mila. I’m 12 years old, and I’m in 6th grade. I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was 9, so I was in 3^rd grade, but it didn’t start with this business. It started with my friend and I deciding to run a math camp for young children, ages 4-7, where they came for a week and we taught them about math while also playing games and getting to know other campers. Since then we’ve done a winter camp, over winter break, and an Art camp. This summer we’re looking to do either, a sports, cooking, or science camp. But this business recently started last year and I was encouraged to really get the idea going when I had to prepare for the Young Americans Holiday Market, where I was going to sell my product.

Q: How can people purchase a Bakery in a Box?

A: You can learn more about me and contact me to place an order on my website.

Q: What motivated or inspired you to start a business?

A: The one thing that motivated me the most for starting this business was that people don’t always have the ingredients they needed to bake something. For example, whenever I would go to bake, we usually didn’t have all the right ingredients to make the dessert, but we also didn’t want to go to the store, for just 1 or 2 things that we needed. So, I was thinking about how I could solve this problem, and the idea of the ingredients being delivered to my house sounded like a good idea. I kept building off the idea until I came to themed boxes that had every ingredient you needed to make, not 1, but 3 recipes. So I went with this idea and I am still building on it.

Q: Please share an overview about your business.

A: My business is a box that gets delivered to your door step and consists of all the pre-measured non-refrigerated ingredients and the recipes to make 3 baked goods. All of this comes in a themed box. For example, right now we have a birthday box, a valentine day box, a winter/holiday box, and the original box.

Q: Tell us about some of the challenges you face being a young business owner.

A: A challenge I face being a young business owner is that people don’t always want to trust that you or your product is trustworthy. In my case people don’t always trust that I’m handling the ingredients right or that my packaging might not be secure enough. I also think that as a young person, you don’t have as much time to make money that you can invest in a business, whereas an adult probably has had previous jobs and a larger amount of money in their savings account that they’re willing to invest in a business. This means that as a young person I’ll have to take out more loans for things like a website or buying ingredients for my boxes, meaning that I’ll have to make more money to pay back those loans and still have a profit.

Q: What’s the best part about having your own business?

A: The best part about having my own business is that I get to be the boss. I get to come up with all the ideas and manage the money. I also would say there’s less room for me to make a mistake because I don’t have a boss telling me that there’s a right way to do something and that if I make a mistake I’m not going to get in huge trouble for it.

Q: Why should other youth start a business?

A: I encourage other youth to start a business because you can make money earlier in life meaning that later in life, things like college and a house will be less of a worry because they already have money saved up to spend on things like that.

Q: Will you keep doing the same business or have you thought about other business ventures?

A: I have thought about other business ventures I could do alongside the bakery in a box, but I also have many ideas for this business including making more boxes, coming up with more original recipes and going to more places I can sell my products. But I think it’s a good idea to have other business ideas though, in case one of them fails but you want to still continue in business.

Q: What is your involvement with Young Americans Center?

A: My involvement with the Young American’s Center has been great. I’ve been to summer camps there, including Be Your Own Boss and Young AmeriTowne. My school has also taken field trips to Young AmeriTowne and I currently have a bank account at Young Americans Bank.

Q: What was your experience in summer camp? What are some things that you learned?

A: My experience in summer camp there was very fun, especially the Be Your Own Boss camp. There, I won the YouthBiz “shark tank” competition with this business and have been developing my business ever since. I learned a lot about marketing, finance, how to develop a good business idea and good business plan. That camp really helped me shape my business into what it is today.