Kayla's Bread and Bakery has built quite a following

California's 2013 cottage food law allowed Kayla Chilvers to start a bakery on her own at home

A peanut butter cookie got Kayla Chilvers thinking about opening her own bakery. It was her own recipe and she shared the cookie with friends and family. “The peanut butter cookie went crazy within my family and then everybody else that tried it,” explained Kayla. “Then I started experimenting with bread.” That was about three years ago, she told me in a phone call.

Kayla Chilvers

It was Thursday afternoon and Kayla had been busy prepping loaves that would go in the refrigerator for baking the next day. Friday, Saturday and Sundays are baking days that begin at 2:30am in her kitchen at home. “I wake up nice and early and get everything baked off and ready to go by 11am,” she said. That’s when her roadside stand opens off Vine Hill Road.

Kayla’s Bread and Bakery has been in business since July of last year. “I was operating solely on pre-orders and pickups every week,” she said. The self-service roadside stand was introduced about a month ago. “People were looking for a more leisurely way to swing by and pick up bread.” It is open Friday through Sunday 11am to 5pm — or until she’s sold out.

Kayla’s Bread and Bakery roadside stand off Vine Hill Rd. (photo by Dale Dougherty)

A Culinary Arts student at El Molino

“I’ve been in love with baking since I was in high school,” said Kayla. She was a student in culinary arts at El Molino. “I give a lot of credit to my baking and pastries teacher then at the school.” However, she pursued veterinary medicine after high school and worked in pet hospitals for 3 or 4 years. She came to feel that veterinary medicine was hard on her emotionally. “In that job, there are some downsides when you’re not able to help the way that you want to help sick patients.” In order to feel better, she picked up baking again.

“I did it as a way of bringing some normalcy and feeling centered again after rough days at the hospital.” Her mom suggested that she start to consider doing something with baking — because those peanut butter cookies were really good and Kayla felt good about the work making them.

Starting a home-based food business

Last year, she started considering finding commercial space for a bakery. With rent and overhead, she knew that she wasn’t able to do it. “Somebody mentioned to me the cottage law in California where you can get licensed to bake at home,” she said. “I looked into it and went through all the certifications that I needed to get.”

It was an “intensive” process that took about 30 days. She submitted an application through the county’s Environmental Health Department. She submitted a floor plan of her kitchen. She had to get her water tested and provide information about her septic tank. She had to get certified in safety as a food handler. She also had to submit all her recipes, listing all the ingredients and sub-ingredients.

“It’s a big thing,” she said. She has respect for the process and had kind words for the people at Environmental Health who helped her through it. “They want to make sure that you’re being safe to feed the public.”

Getting the Word Out

How did she let people know about her bakery? Some of it was done old school with flyer and some was done digitally. Her boyfriend, now fiancé, printed out 50-75 flyers. “We hung them up on every single bulletin board we could find,” she said. The flyer had a QR code that linked to her website where you could sign up when she was ready to take orders.

Her bestselling cookie: S’mores with a brown buttered graham cracker base

“The flyers were the start but then I created an Instagram account,” she said. “I built anticipation for first two or three weeks before launch.” She also began posting on Nextdoor, which she considers her number one source of business. (I first saw her there.)

“You just have to be brave and bold and be willing to put yourself in situations when you can get your name out there,” said Kayla. She has a knack for social media, a natural who makes other people feel good. “I sit with my morning coffee sometimes and I just write about what I’m feeling for that day. I want people to know there’s real person behind this screen not a big marketing campaign.”

Now she schedules her promotions for the week ahead. “On Mondays, I’ll write out my menu; then I’ll create posts for the coming week and schedule them so they are ready to go.”

Her Home Kitchen

Kayla describes her home kitchen as “warm”, “cozy” and “farmhouse-inspired” and she spends a lot of time there. She bakes everything in a regular oven, which is on about 14 hours straight on baking days. “I’m hoping to upgrade to a bread over someday,” she said. “I can only fit so many loaves in my oven at a time.” Depending on the weekend, she might make between 40 and 70 loaves a week.

Over the Christmas holiday, she was so busy that she stayed up 36 hours straight to take care of all the orders she had. “It was amazing, a huge rush, and I was honored to do so, but man, I was tired when I was done.”

Kayla will be busy for Valentine’s Day after posting her menu on social media earlier in the week,

Her Nextdoor post ends with: “Thank you for choosing local, thoughtful baking and for supporting this little bakery during such a sweet weekend!”

Slowing Down with Sourdough

“When I started experimenting with sourdough, the process behind sourdough taught me to slow down a lot because it is an act of patience, an act of love,” she said. “It taught me to trust my own instincts and put everything that I have into what I’m doing. Nothing brings me as much joy as when I receive feedback that somebody felt connected to what I was doing.”

A favorite story of hers is that somebody bought a loaf of bread for her 100-year-old grandmother. “When she bit into my sourdough, she started to cry a lit bit and she had said it just took her back to making bread in the kitchen with her mom.”

I asked what’s surprised her so far. “Word of mouth spreads a lot faster than you think,” she replied. “It kind of caught me off guard.” People who enjoy her cookies or her bread tell other people. The other thing that surprised her about her business, she said, “You’re not just a baker; you’re also the bookkeeper, the marketer, the social media analyst.”

She said that she was blessed with parents “who always instilled in me that I’m capable of doing anything that I set my mind to.” Kayla added: “I know that if apply myself to something, I know that I can do it.”

Kayla has befriended others who have cottage food businesses in West County. She mentioned Oak Grove Farm Stand and Riverbend Farm Stand, all of whom are women-owned and run by bakers like Kayla. “All of us kind of band together to support one another, and that’s another reason why I love what I do is that it’s always community over competition with us.”

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California’s Cottage Food Law (AB 1616), which went into effect January 1, 2013, allows individuals to prepare and sell specific “low-risk” foods (non-potentially hazardous) from home, such as baked goods, jams, and roasted coffee. Sonoma County businesses must apply for a license through the Environmental Health agency. (link)

Cottage food businesses mentioned in this article use hotplate.com, a platform for taking online orders from customers:

• Kayla’s Bread and Bakery

• Oak Grove Farm Stand

• Riverbend Farm Stand

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All photos except one courtesy of Kayla Chilvers.