From chocolate covered strawberries to cheesecake cups, freshman business administration and management major Stephanie Carpio sells it all and more. These treats are sold as part of her home-based business, Stephanie’s Treats and Goods, which she started in Oct. 2020.
Carpio said there are a couple reasons she started her business, one of them being that she had to quit her job due to COVID-19. She said that she originally saw an item she sells, the churro cheesecake, on TikTok.
“Many people were posting about their business; it just started coming up on my page,” Carpio said. “I started with churro cheesecake because … I didn’t hear about anybody selling it around here or like Facebook ads or anything. I didn’t see it around. So I thought I will do it. It did go pretty well for like the first months, after that it kind of slowed down.”
Carpio said her business is bilingual, as she also speaks Spanish. She said her parents helped her start her business, with her father helping with cake pop packaging. Carpio said her sister also used to help with the treats.
Carpio said she posts about her business on all of her personal social media accounts. She said that her sales are made by order and she mainly tries to take orders from her Instagram account, but she also has orders come in through Snapchat and Facebook. Carpio said she also does flash sales every month for her business.
“I don’t have a specific day, just once a month, I try to do it. Just to get out a little more. That’s what I started this year, well at the end of last year. It’s just simple sales that have the treats … like churro cheesecake bites or the cheesecake cups,” Carpio said.
Carpio said the length of time it takes to make one of her treats depends on the item. For example, she said that the amount of time it takes for her to make one of her more popular items, the chocolate covered strawberries, is around an hour, but it does depend on the details. Carpio said she starts the churro cheesecake the night before, due to it having to chill, but it takes about an hour to an hour and a half to make.
Director of the Professional Edge Center and Business and Sport Management majors Career Coach Kirk Bryans said Carpio brought up her business during a meeting. He said while discussing her resume, she mentioned her business, to which he suggested she put it on her resume.
“We went through her entire resume and she’s worked places and so we’re putting things together and I was just asking questions about, ‘Do you volunteer, are you part of any clubs here on campus?’ And she had some volunteer work and some things that she was interested in,” Bryans said. “And so my last question was, ‘Is there anything else that you can think of that you might want to put on a resume?’ And she was like, ‘Well, I own my own business. Would that count?’ And I’m like, ‘Oh my goodness. Yes. What is the business?’ And she says that she is a baker. She makes sweets. And that’s really how I got introduced to what she does and how she does it.”
Bryans said he has ordered from Stephanie’s Treats and Goods before for the Professional Edge Center office. He said he also gave Carpio networking tips to help her business. Having something like owning your own business on a resume is helpful for employers, Bryans said.
“Number one, it shows that you are creative, you’re a leader. You’re very proactive, right? You’re organized, you can multitask because, oh my gosh, you’ve gotta do school. And then you have to fulfill orders,” Bryans said. “You’ve got a lot of responsibility because you have to bill people and collect from those people for what they buy. You have to set up social media so you have all these marketing skills. It shows someone who’s looking at your resume that they are getting someone who is light years [more] mature from somebody who may not have had any experience or experience in one of those things I’ve just mentioned.”
Stephanie’s Treats and Goods can be found on Instagram at @stephanies_treats_goods and on Facebook at stephanies.treats.goods.
