The baked goods corner of social media is rife with images of gooey and salt- and sprinkle-flecked treats. But working diligently from a spacious facility in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn – with a focus on creating memorable, if occasionally messy, cakes – Clio Goodman has managed to secure an enviably robust following.
Describing bakers as “artists” has become an industry cliche, but in Goodman’s case, the cakes she sells at ByClio are very much works of art – both despite and because of their imperfections. She’s less interested in scoring likes than making pieces that beguile, and her petal-strewn cakes call to mind edible flower crowns. “People often say the way I frost my cakes has a painterly quality to it,” Goodman says.
Working with a four-person team, Goodman evokes the work of the French impressionist painter Paul Gauguin, whose pieces played up the sultry power of florals. Beyond being beautiful and a reliable crowd-pleaser, Goodman says that flowers “help me connect to my femininity”.
Rife with the colorful, sensuous petals that top her goods, her Instagram grid has earned a handful of high-profile clients, and has been the cornerstone of a business that is in the black three years after she founded it.
The 35-year-old came to her own brand of baking after an eclectic culinary career. There was her time working as a private chef, and the two years she spent as a pastry cook at the Union Square Cafe, Danny Meyer’s acclaimed Manhattan restaurant. Goodman also helped develop and open the now legendary Pudding Shop in the East Village, known for its vast spectrum of flavors, and she spent time as the executive pastry chef at BKLYN Larder, the prestigious prepared foods emporium blocks away from Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
Her latest project, ByClio Bakery, began in her home kitchen, during lockdown. Her sugary creations, which have gained a following of other artists and creatives on Instagram, ooze with individuality. There is nothing cookie-cutter or formulaic about Goodman’s cakes, which are packed with unique flavors such as cardamom, saffron and Turkish coffee, and often decked out with flower petals.
“I’m just embracing tastes that I’ve gotten to know over time, and I’m sharing them with other people,” says Goodman, who studied baking and pastry arts at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.
Goodman, who is also an accomplished visual artist, initially sold her cakes through Instagram before setting up shop out of a tiny spot in Greenpoint, also in Brooklyn. A year ago, she moved into her massive and light-filled Gowanus facility. It was “love at first sight, plus it’s close to where my parents grew up”. There, she sells cakes whole and by the slice, along with brownies, cookies and bars.
Now celebrating a full year in her store, Goodman says she is ready to take her business to the next level. She has her eye on the success of a new line of packaged cake mixes she is launching and has been promoting via social media. “Instagram is my main marketing tool,” she says.
Goodman believes that her range of ready-made cake mixes offers the most likely – and most immediate – opportunity to grow her company. “The bakery itself is like a boutique and I would like it to stay a boutique,” she says. “But I would like one of the products I’m making to have some more commercial success and growth. Mixes are the most obvious path toward expansion at a cost I can afford at the moment. I have to do something that makes sense for where I’m at right now.” The baker, who can often be found running the cash register until closing, has set a goal of boosting her revenue two and a half times from where it is now.
Robust sales of her kits “would allow me to keep on making those custom orders” while still finding growth in other areas – and perhaps hiring more help. But Goodman concedes that the mixes are just one option among many that could help her reach the next level of success without compromising her core focus on individuality. “Ultimately, the only thing holding me back is I haven’t found a direction that makes me feel truly energized,” she says. “If I’m feeling inspired and excited, I’m more likely to get something done.”
The Guardian talked to three experts about her current predicament and passions, and asked for advice.
Lee Schrager
Founder of the New York City and Miami wine and food festivals
I suggest that Clio introduce limited-edition or seasonal cakes, items that emphasize the use of high-quality and fresh ingredients to create a monthly calendar of cakes. This would be a recurring series that would feature a cake each month tied to a specific event – LGBTQ+ Pride month, Black History month, Breast Cancer Awareness month, etc. Such a program would cultivate a strong level of excitement for customers, keep them coming back for more – all the while making positive referrals to friends and families.
Make an effort to build strong connections and relationships with your customers by engaging with them on social media. Perhaps offer personalized options for special occasions – for example, send them cards for a discount during birthday weeks or anniversaries.
Connect and partner with local events, or wedding planners to expand your reach; collaborations open doors to joint promotions and introduce your cakes to entire new audiences. Focus on a welcome experience in your shop via daily cake-sampling opportunities. Consider displaying photos on a wall of cakes that have been a successful part of your bakery’s history and evolution.
Focus on customer service and maintain strict quality measures to ensure consistency in every cake. Consistency is the key to keeping people returning for more. Work with a creative local web designer for easy-to-use online ordering and local delivery platforms. Also, you should implement focused marketing opportunities, online advertising and social media campaigns that highlight the uniqueness and artisanal standards of your cakes.
Most importantly, participate in local events like the New York City wine and food festival that give back to the industry and help businesses like ByClio Bakery build strong reputations in their community.
Anna Whiteman
Principal at Coefficient Capital, a growth equity fund with a speciality in food-focused consumer brands, and founder of Rad Ladies, a network of female entrepreneurs
One of Clio’s most unique elements are the folks who eat and love her cakes, and I would recommend that she lean into her strong organic customer base for inspiration on what could be a natural extension for her brand. Taking a cue from a business like Bubble in the beauty space – which has always viewed its customers as organic sources of wisdom – she could create a space (a WhatsApp channel, an Instagram close friends community) to start polling customers on what they’d love to see next and then develop a product line that serves an already loyal audience. The benefit of leaning into community is that it can further engage your core base, create an evergreen product innovation engine, and allows access into fans’ daily lives so she can better understand who she’s building for. Are they always on the go? Cake balls in a pouch! Is the real magic of the cakes in the combination of unique ingredients or in the icing? Maybe a limited drop model of custom flavor mixes – both in store and online. All of this community engagement should help Clio home in on what makes her so unique in the baking category while simultaneously building hype and momentum around her brand.
Alison Cayne
Founder of Haven’s Kitchen, a packaged sauce and flavor starter company
The rule of retail is you pay rent for 24 hours a day, so the more of those hours you can bring in sales, the better. Clio’s plan to consider evening hours is great – any more time she can optimize operations works in her favor.
There are two ways to scale a baking business like Clio’s.
The first is to open more locations – but the real estate and build-out need to be super inexpensive, the offering relatively easy labor, and the messaging super clear. Essentially, it has to be beyond simple for people to get what they want. Think Levain – big cookies, not much variety, $5, lots of locations with long, long lines. She’ll need a product that people understand and doesn’t require much craft or labor. It’s nice to have a built-in focus group. That’s how we started our sauce line.
Then there’s the Rao’s model. The OG, super-elite, hard-to-get-a-rez Italian place akin to a boutique bakery that launched a sauce and just sold to Campbells for $2.7bn. It was a long road to get there, and a lot of people and cash necessary to make that unicorn story happen. But it happens.
Clio appears to be more keen on the second model, and if that’s the case, she still needs a simplified product that doesn’t cost a lot to make, with very clear messaging. She’ll need to look at the grocery store shelves and see what needs a glow-up that she can offer affordably. Then she’ll test the heck out of it with her existing customers, so by the time she’s ready to sell it on her website, she already has excitement around it. Once it’s on her website, she can learn a lot more about her customers and get to a nice, contribution margin-positive spot, before she enters retail. The goal needs to be lightweight, long shelf life and easy to ship.
There is a third option that my friend Ayeshah Abuelhiga at Mason Dixie Foods pursued. She had a biscuit stand and decided to start selling the frozen biscuit dough for people to bake at home. Now it’s a huge business. Is there a way to do elegant cakes that way?
One challenge Clio faces is her website, which makes it seem like ordering a cake is far more complicated than it should be. New Yorkers love the hunt, and scarcity is your friend. But if the goal is to scale, whether into a product (frozen cakes or mixes or decorations) or via more locations, it has to be the simplest recipe, price, use case and message – consumers are simply too busy and too overwhelmed to read, decipher or think too hard. They’ll just move on.
The choice
Schrager’s responses felt as if they made the most sense for Goodman. She loves the idea of connecting with local wedding planners and being more involved in holidays. “I agree that I need to be more engaged and participate in community and city events,” she says. “I would love to be in the New York City wine and food festival as well as other public forums.” The biggest takeaway she got from Schrager was to update her website and make it easier to order cakes and mixes. “He’s absolutely right – my website has to be simpler and my products need to be simpler to scale via online sales,” she says. “In the meantime, I am lucky that I already have great relationships with most of my customers when they come in because I am so engaged with them both in person and online. I do like the idea of sending birthday discounts for customers as an incentive. Customer service is already one of our strongest qualities.”
