Luck: The Secret Ingredient in Alum’s Home-Baked Business

Sometimes a hobby becomes a career when you least expect it. Just ask Adriana De Casas.

De Casas (Business Administration, ’17) has been a baker since middle school. It began as a typical run-of-the-mill hobby, but after she started high school, baking went from “pastime” to “part-time business” seemingly overnight.

“I started selling cakes to family and friends. Word of mouth got me other orders, and then it just became a part-time thing,” she said. “I got really into it, and I wanted to make it into a real business.”

A self-taught pastry maker, De Casas learned everything she knows from YouTube tutorial videos, her stepfather, and a few cake decorating classes at a small shop in her hometown of Compton. Encouraged by her growing success, increasing skills, and supportive family and friends, De Casas toyed with the idea of attending culinary school straight after high school—a notion challenged for being too lofty at the time.

“[My aunt] was like, ‘No, it’s a bad idea. It’s so expensive. Go get your bachelor’s and then if you’re still interested in doing that, you can go to culinary school,’” she said. “Now, I don’t feel like it will benefit me much since I’ve learned so much [on my own], and it is too expensive for only the couple of classes I need.”

Heeding her aunt’s advice, De Casas decided to attend Chico State, where the first-generation student chose to option in human resource management and minor in small business management—solid training for a career in the business world. When her time became consumed with her studies, her sorority, Lambda Theta Nu, and working for ITSS, she temporarily lost sight of her culinary dreams. After graduation in May 2017, she abandoned them altogether.

“I debated, ‘Was it just a stage?’” she said. “I came back home and was just looking at human resources and computer science jobs. I felt like I just needed a job and to make money.”

Life luckily had other plans. Six months after moving back to Compton, an old client messaged her on Facebook to inquire if she was still making cakes. That outreach reignited De Casas’ passion, and she picked up her whisk with a renewed purpose and direction.

“I was like, ‘I haven’t done any in a while, but I’ll make one for you,’” she said. “Then I just kind of started back up. I created an Instagram account and started posting as often as I could.”

Sometimes orders were few and far between, so De Casas started full-time work as an insurance technician for Keenan and Associates in Torrance.

She officially began La Llorona Bakes in early 2019, and she strives to run the small permitted home-based bakery operation alone, with sporadic and minimal help from her immediate and extended family.

Just like in high school, and now with the help of Instagram and Facebook, word of mouth boosted sales quickly, she said. Her legit business started to take off, fulfilling over 10 orders a week on average. She soon began participating in small business events like Molcajete Dominguero, where her baking and decorating skills were on display in person and garnered more orders and revenue.

“It’s this huge event where a whole bunch of small businesses and entrepreneurs sell their things (food, shirts, soaps, etc.), and it’s mainly focused on Latino [businesses],” she said. “Attending events like that really helps get my name out there.”

Running a new business, attending events, and working full time proved to be very stressful, but by March she was able to quit her insurance job to focus on all of her energy on La Llorona Bakes. Then COVID-19 hit. 

While the current pandemic hasn’t deterred De Casas from running her own business, it has slowed her income and changed the way she operates, such as having customers come to her home for a contactless pick up outside. With social-distancing rules and expectations in effect, the events that proved to be most lucrative for De Casas are either being postponed or canceled, she said, so she has to rely more on her loyal customers and social media. There have been highs and lows. The highs, busy holiday weekends like Mother’s Day for example, help keep her business afloat while word continues to spread and she continues to market on social media with hopes of one day developing an official website, she said.

Fortunately, her delicious cakes and specialty conchas (Mexican sweet bread rolls) are still in demand and orders are coming in at a steady pace, which has De Casas thinking about moving her business from inside her home to outside in a food truck—which would be more economical than leasing and capitalizes on the fact few people want to dine indoors right now.

In Mexican folklore, La Llorona, or “the Wailing Woman”, is a ghostly figure that has scared people away from the water for centuries. Her legend has varied over time and from storyteller to storyteller, but the idea is that her unfaithful and neglectful husband began showing attention only to their two children before leaving her for another woman. Enraged, she drowned her children only to regret it immediately and subsequently drowned herself. Banished to purgatory on Earth, La Llorona haunts rivers and lakes draped in a white funeral gown, crying out for her lost children—and occasionally kidnapping other children or attacking adulterous husbands.

So why did Adriana De Casas choose to name her home-baking venture after such a melancholy figure? The irony, of course.

La Llorona isn’t exactly what you’d call an ideal homemaker, and it’s not easy to imagine her baking cakes, cookies, and conchas for her children. The logo, designed by De Casas’s stepfather, is a twist on the modern La Calavera Catrina—an elegant and skeletal “Lady of the Dead” widely known as a symbol of the Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, celebration—with the addition of a baker’s hat to punctuate the parody in the business’s name.

Not only is the story born from her Mexican culture, De Casas’ mother used to tell it to her when she was a child—and, according to her mother, it made her cry a lot, De Casas said. Now, in her own way, she’s giving new life to the old legend.

“I thought it was cool. La Llorona Bakes instead of La Llorona Bakery [or] something basic like Creations by Adriana,” she said. “It’s a scary legend, but I love it.”