Turning a Baking Passion into a Business: Interview with Fleurs et Sel Founder, Lara Adekoya
This week’s interview is with Lara Adekoya, the founder of Fleurs et Sel bakery. Fleurs et Sel is a truly unique cookie business that Lara started on Instagram during covid. Three years later, she’s expanding to her first store in LA! In addition to a unique digital-first approach, Lara has done a ton of cool brand partnerships with enterprises ranging from the NBA to Netflix. Her creativity also shines through in the innovative and delicious flavors Fleurs et Sel has become known for. Can you say lavender vanilla chai? Yum!
Following her graduation from USC, Lara worked at Nordstrom selling designer shoes during the day while she did pre-recs for dental school at UCLA at night. When the pandemic hit, Lara was furloughed from Nordstrom at the same time that she learned that she wouldn’t be attending dental school as planned. True to the infectious energy and positive attitude I experienced during the interview, Lara took the moment in stride. She started baking cookies for her Nordstrom customers and friends. What started as delivering a few cookies a day eventually turned into a pickup line outside her apartment door and a full-time business.
One of the most powerful things I have witnessed as a mindset and performance coach is the impact of approaching life from the mentality that you are in control of building the life that you want. Lara illustrates that mindset to a tee. She has an infectious energy, charisma, and an undeniable work ethic. If you’re based in LA, keep an eye out for her store opening on instagram and go experience her amazing energy in person!
In the interview, we spoke about:
The unconventional path that led to Fleurs et Sel
The mindset that drives everything she does
The most honest way she would describe her first year in business
How she handles bad days
Making decisions that align with who she is
What’s on her horizon
Note: The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length. While every effort has been made to preserve the integrity of the conversation, please be aware that the quotes may not be verbatim but reflect the essence of the dialogue.
What's the path that you took to get to where you are now?
I was born and raised in Seattle. Education was always a priority in our household. I went to a prestigious high school where everyone was hyper-focused on getting into the best universities. You know how that goes. I ended up going to USC for 4 years and did my undergrad in Global Health and French. I was on a super strict pre-science course. After undergrad, I actually applied for a master's in public health at USC. I thought I was gonna go work for the World Health Organization doing amazing things but decided to pivot and become a dentist. I went to UCLA and did all of the pre-recs like biochem, physics, and chemistry. I was going to school at night and I had a 9 to 5 during the day working at Nordstrom at the Grove selling designer shoes. I really enjoyed working in a dynamic, fast-paced retail environment. I have a bubbly personality and I'm pretty personable. It was a total 180 from having a lab coat and goggles and a science notebook looking up elements. It was a breath of fresh air for me to just really be myself and connect with people, which is something I didn't get in the classroom studying for exams and doing individualized lab work. I had coworkers and I met so many people from all over the world every day. I had all of the accolades, like Nordstrom top seller and best customer service, which was great but what I loved the most about working at Nordstrom was the ability to form relationships with customers that went beyond the transaction. I was consistently recognized as one of the top sellers at Nordstrom the Grove with nearly a million dollars in sales per year, and I got there because I had really strong relationships with my customers.
So fast forward to the beginning of the pandemic. I had applied to dental school and was just waiting to hear back and quit Nordstrom. That was my plan. April 2020 came and I got furloughed from Nordstrom. They literally just let us go and I filed for unemployment. I heard back from all the dental schools and I didn't get into any of the schools I applied to. So I was really just at home with more time on my hands. I said, “Okay, I did like working at Nordstrom. I didn’t want to work there forever but maybe I'm interested in business. Maybe I'm interested in entrepreneurship. Maybe I'm interested in sales. Maybe I go get an MBA and pursue something in the business realm.” I knew I was really good at my job at Nordstrom. It went beyond selling $1,000 shoes. I started applying for jobs when no one was hiring. When I got tired of filling out my resume and tweaking it to every single job criteria and search keywords, I would shut the laptop and go to the kitchen and just bake. That's just what brought me joy. It allowed me to be creative.
I used my baking as a way to reconnect with my community which included former USC classmates and coworkers from Nordstrom. A lot of my Nordstrom customers, who I had really great relationships with, were texting me things like, “Hey, I want to order these. Are you working or did you lose your job?” They were just checking in. I ended up sending out a mass text to 50 to 75 of my customers who I would talk to on a fairly regular basis. I said, “Hey, I’m not working anymore but I did start a small business making cookies. If you are interested or want to support or like cookies, hit me up.” Many of them did. So I baked and I delivered to many of my customers. I enjoyed the creativity of building a business. I was also semi-interviewing with a couple of other jobs but was always like, “I'd rather be making cookies and selling them to my friends and my customers.” I just thought, “This is a no.” I’d have my blazer on and would be very qualified for the roles I was interviewing for, but I’d hop off the interviews and then run to go bake. So that's how it started. I hate the word or the expression “you blew up” because that makes it seem like it's so overnight. It was very much a one-day-at-a-time thing baking, driving to my customers, baking, driving it to 6 customers, baking, driving it to 20 customers, baking again. It got to the point where I couldn’t drive to all of my customers. Then I started inviting people to pick up from my apartment which eventually turned into a full-blown line down the street.
Wow! What a story. A lot of people might have been really down in the dumps after the dental school moment but you decided to run with it and believe that you would figure it out. How did you develop that mindset and what helps you tap into it?
My parents really stressed education and would have been thrilled if I became a dentist. There were four of us kids and, eventually, they realized that we weren’t going to become dentists and lawyers and architects so their mindset shifted and they said, “You all have different strengths. Tap into those strengths, tap into those passions, and whatever you want to do, just be the best.”
So I tried to be the best dental applicant. That didn’t pan out but that was also someone else determining my future and determining if I was gonna move forward or not. I wanted to have more ownership of my own path. Even when I worked at Nordstrom, I said, “I’m gonna be the best at working at Nordstrom. It might seem a little weird because I just graduated from this prestigious university with a double major but, you know what, I'm gonna be the best while I’m here.” Then I said, “I'm gonna be the best at making cookies.” I have a lot of strengths and I may be book smart, but there’s more to me than just being book smart.
What was it like when you went from making cookies on the side to going all in on it as a full-time business?
It was a mix of more interest and demand paired with the fact that I just felt a lack of enthusiasm interviewing for corporate jobs. Before I worked at Nordstrom, I had another job right out of college. My parents said, “If you want to stay in LA, you need a job.” So I got a job as an account specialist for a furniture company. You clock in, you sit at the desk. I'm messing around with Excel with no idea what I’m doing. I didn't last long. I ended up calling in sick to go interview at Nordstrom. I'm just the type of person who needs to be moving, drawing, creating. I couldn’t just sit at a desk.
But to answer your question, I guess I knew that this was something special with the demand and the support that I was getting. I think it's important to note that I did start the business in the summer of 2020 when George Floyd happened and there were a lot of racial uprisings around the country. I did get an influx of people curious about supporting a black-owned business and especially a black woman-owned business. I happen to be a black woman so I happened to fit into that hashtag category. However, I'm glad that my product, my business, and the support I received transcended that and didn't stop when everyone moved on. I started off marketing on instagram and there were so many opportunities to share a post or share a square during the pandemic. It was really difficult trying to navigate all of it. I had a couple of friends who skyrocketed in popularity for being black or being a creator or being an activist. I saw them go from zero to a hundred overnight.
I didn’t want to become a one-hit-wonder business. I just wanted to be known for having an amazing product. I want to be the best baker and I want to be here in 10 years. It’s not that race doesn't matter because it does matter. I am black and I am Asian, but I don’t want that to be the reason why people buy my product. Just buy my cookies because you like cookies and I have the best ones.
What's the most honest way you would describe the first year of running your own business?
DIY. I remember when I first started I didn't even have stickers. I didn’t even know how to make a sticker. I made a logo on Canva which is actually the logo I still use today. I literally pre- printed it, cut it out, put clear masking tape over it, and that was my packaging. I went to the store and they had round boxes so that’s what I used. Today I would never deliver to 20 addresses in one day but at the time I was like, “Sure, I’ll do it!” It was a time. I didn’t have a website my first year. I took all my orders on Instagram. I would get like 50 dms in 5 min. My process has become much more sophisticated, but it was very much all DIY and learning as I went.
You have the best energy! Do you have ever have moments of self-doubt or off days? What do you do to tap back into the incredible energy you have?
I am very bubbly but it's not always like that. There are so many days where I am down or feeling anxious. My customers don’t know this but sometimes after a day of pickups, I delete instagram. I don’t want to see any more messages. I don’t want to be scrolling. I’ll cut my phone off because I just need space and some peace.
Things are going to change because I have my store coming, but up until this point the last 3 years, I’ve delivered or brought the order to every customer. I always have a smile on my face. I could have been crying right before but when I see my customer I am enthusiastic. I am thankful. I just wanna exude gratitude and appreciation for them because I feel like the customer's job is to receive the product and enjoy it. How many times have you gone somewhere and the person delivering the product has an attitude? I could literally be in depresso mode but when I go out to give that cookie to the customer, you would have no idea. I’m not saying anyone should fake their feelings, but it's important to me that the customer has a good experience.
You’re launching your first store soon. What's it been like launching a new channel and part of the business?
There are so many layers to what I’m building. I'm really good at being present and focusing on the now. I try not to think too much ahead into the future because it could stress me out. I just try to focus on what’s here. Now that I have a store, I have to think ahead and plan. It's been a learning curve for me focusing on the orders I have for today and tomorrow, while also thinking about how in 6 months I need to find $50k to pay for the engineers. I think, “Am I gonna get there? Am I gonna stress about it?”
I chose the more difficult route with the store. I could have found a closed down Baskin Robbins or Subway and converted it into my cookie shop. I know several other bakeries and shops that took that route and they opened before me. I chose to start from scratch because I wanted the whole look and feel of my space to be a continuum and an extension of how we’ve grown. I think it would be a shame if I took over a Subway and I put my cookies where condiments once were. That's not me. I worked so hard to build this and curated and crafted it to be thoughtful and intentional. I'm going to see that vision through. It’s definitely been more time-consuming, more expensive, more draining, and more complicated than it could have been, but I have learned a lot along the way, and I think all of those learnings will apply to my next store. If I didn’t learn them now, when would I?
What really strikes me is how intentional you are about doing things in a way that feels aligned with who you are as a person. That takes a lot of courage.
Definitely. I have a hundred percent self-funded my business. It's been hard, especially with a big capital expense like a brick-and-mortar store. It’s been a difficult year financially. I’ve had people reach out and offer to invest in the business. It would have been nice chunks of money. But as you know that's not a loose string. There's a thick rope attached to it. It reminds me of applying to dental school when I had someone else telling me yes and no. That's the energy I felt when I was talking to these investors. That's suffocating energy. I thought either these people aren’t the right people for me, or I'm just not meant to take this on right now. I turned those opportunities down. I'm not saying I'm not open to investment in the future.
I’ll share another quick story from my days at Nordstrom. It was holiday season. During that time, they have designated people they hire to wrap gifts. It’s typically a slow process. I’d ask every person that I sold a shoe to if they wanted it wrapped. I’d say, “Give me 5 min.” I would make my own station at the gift-wrapping table. I would wrap that thing beautifully in 2 min and my customer was out the door. I wanted to service my customer from A to Z including parking validation, ice water, and gift wrapping. I did that for every customer. The store manager got a complaint from other customers who were waiting to have their gifts wrapped. They wanted to know why I was faster and couldn’t help them. I was making the gift-wrapping people look bad because people were waiting, and they were just seeing me run around for other customers. I got called to the manager’s office and told I couldn’t gift wrap. The fact that I got disciplined for being an amazing employee and offering above-and-beyond service to my customers was crazy.
I take pleasure in every box I put together for my customers because I think back to that moment when I got disciplined for doing the right thing. It’s a story I’m going to tell my employees to show them what’s possible when you go the extra mile for a customer. When you do that, they’ll remember and come back. I still have a list of customers that hit me up 3 years later from Nordstrom. All that to say, I learned so much at Nordstrom that I have implemented and can't wait to continue implementing in my business. Now that I have a brick-and-mortar store I want to create that elevated experience.
What’s next for you?
The store is my current next step for the business. I'm very excited about hiring and building a team. That’s compounded joy that I'm looking forward to. I am in a 6-year relationship with my partner, my boyfriend. I call him partner because he's my life partner. I’m excited to continue growing with him. We're not engaged but I do look forward to getting married one day. I look forward to having kids one day.
I'm just really excited to pour into the community because they poured so much into me. I’m thinking about an opening party and having free cookies for all of my customers. What I found is people share with their friends and orders start coming from friends of friends. If I had an event, it would really be this collective community showing up.
I’m excited to keep building and have an address that I can put on the Internet so everyone knows where to find us. That's been the hardest part about having this Instagram digital business. Some people are happy to blindly place an order not knowing where they're going to pick up and other people are not. It’s nice to be able to say that the store is coming soon!