A 16-year-old girl from Virginia, Olivia Rife, frequently wakes up early and rushes to her pastry shop in Richlands, Virginia before 7 am to start baking cakes and sweets of various flavors.
Usually, the shop’s signature pastries include cupcakes, assorted brownie cakes, fondue strawberries, Oreo popsicle cakes, and Olivia’s specialty dessert: a giant chocolate chip cookie that she and her customers love.
Olivia, a native Virginian who is currently in the 11th grade, has been running her own pastry shop in a commercial area on Grayson Avenue for over two months.
Baking is a career path she consciously chose as it is promising and her passion lies in it. “It has brought me great happiness and joy,” Olivia told The Epoch Times, “I am entirely self-taught.”
Starting from scratch, she learned baking step by step through YouTube and Instagram video tutorials, gradually mastering the basics, knowledge, and skills of baking through continuous practice, and constantly seeking new knowledge and techniques.
In fact, Olivia’s establishment of the bakery, Liv-Y-Licious, was not just a hobby at first, but started out of boredom during the lockdown due to the CCP virus (COVID-19). Olivia missed her friends and classmates greatly.
She said it all began with baking giant cookies at home, but it wasn’t until she made a perfect German chocolate birthday cake for her dad’s friend that she started planning to busy herself in the kitchen. Olivia said everyone praised the cake as “delicious” and it “definitely didn’t look like a cake made by a first-timer.”
From then on, Olivia’s baking career started to unfold in stages:
Firstly, making and selling various kinds of cookies at home, as well as customizing “super delicate” cakes for customers.
Olivia said next she plans to step out of her comfort zone and start marketing on her Facebook.
Finally, as Liv-Y-Licious grew popular and her equipment expanded beyond her house’s capacity, she moved the business into her dad’s two-story office building. Her dad, a contractor, provided her with the upstairs space for free.
“It took about a year to renovate,” she said, “After the renovation was complete, I opened for business.”
The ribbon-cutting ceremony for the pastry shop was held in early May, and residents of Richlands community came to show their support. She said some bought cakes, some shared her photos online, overall the local people gave her immense support and encouragement.
Fortunately, the shop’s business boomed right from the start, allowing Olivia to make a good profit, but she found herself with less and less free time. For a high school student, running a business meant she couldn’t focus on other activities like her peers.
However, she strives to achieve a “perfect balance” between learning, life, and business by going out with friends on weekends, using evenings for homework, and working 5 to 6 days a week despite the cake shop only operating 4 days a week.
To lighten Olivia’s workload, her mom and sister sometimes work at the shop with her.
She said that running Liv-Y-Licious not only allows her to meet “amazing” people and savor delicious pastries, but the biggest benefit is laying a solid foundation for her future.
She smiled and said, “I put in a little extra now, so that when I grow up, I won’t have to work so hard.”