Turning a pandemic bake sale into a full-blown business? For Babka Bailout, it’s a piece of cake

When Michal Prevor’s housekeeper Carmen’s work dried up after the pandemic hit in 2020, the pair started searching for ways to raise money to support her family.

That’s when Prevor began thinking about babkas, the braided Jewish coffee cake her husband would treat the family to on holidays or weekends.

With his help, she and Carmen learned how to bake his family recipe. Then they adopted a digital version of the trusty bake sale fundraiser and began selling babkas around Jersey City by posting details on a local moms Facebook group.

Stunned to get 50 orders within minutes, the two worked around the clock to roll out yards of dough, slather on layers of chocolate spread and bake the loaves in Prevor’s kitchen, before driving around the area to deliver them.

The more often Prevor posted her freshly baked goods online, the more sharply sales rose. She soon realized they could turn their bake sale into a full-scale business. So she set up Babka Bailout, renting commercial kitchen space nearby after her oven door fell off during one baking spree.

The story of Babka Bailout’s birth holds some of the most vital truths about running a food business today. The pandemic devastated the restaurant industry, but it also gave rise to a new generation of food entrepreneurs who harnessed the power of digitalization and social media. By hyperfocusing on one product and operating out of shared commercial kitchens (or even a private one), entrepreneurs like Prevor are able to build a business before adding the burdens and stresses of a brick-and-mortar store — high rents, staffing issues and food waste.

A streak of creativity also helps. Based in Jersey City, known as one of the U.S.’s most ethnically diverse cities, Prevor wanted to give babkas a twist. So, alongside the traditional chocolate or cinnamon versions of the bread that originated in Eastern Europe, she adapted cross-cultural savory and sweet creations to help reach new markets.

Babka Bailout offers Japanese-inspired black sesame babka, Brie guava, and dulce de leche, which rank alongside Fruity Pebbles-filled cereal milk babkas as some of its best sellers. Babka s’mores at winter pop-ups. Babka ice cream sundaes at summer festivals.

As a result, Babka Bailout is not merely an exercise in Jewish nostalgia; it is cultivating new culinary traditions for different people. For instance, many Filipino customers head straight for the ube Nutella Oreo ganache babka, made with the distinctively dark purple yam native to the Philippines and popular in many desserts there.

Like many pandemic-era ventures, Babka Bailout used e-commerce to feed its growth. Alongside its small Jersey City storefront, it now sells babkas through its website to clients across the country who find it hard to access the popular Jewish treat.

“Digitalization is huge for businesses today,” says Prevor, who is Israeli but grew up in the Dominican Republic. “It gives me the opportunity to have a much larger business and to thrive not only locally but nationwide.”

Running a hybrid business could be key to ensuring Babka Bailout survives its first few years, which are often the most challenging for small businesses as they grapple with cash flow and finding the financing they need to expand. Research from the Mastercard Economics Institute, however, shows that small-business survival rates are almost back to pre-pandemic levels, with hybrid online and in-person ventures having a stronger chance of staying afloat.

After years spent traveling abroad for her family’s agricultural technology company, Prevor loves that her new entrepreneurial lifestyle has given her more time to spend with her children, although running her own company has proven to have a steep learning curve.

Through trial and error, she quickly realized that the best way to grow Babka Bailout was to split tasks and harness her team’s individual strengths rather than try to do it all herself.

With Carmen overseeing the bakery, Prevor now focuses on increasing sales and orchestrating the capital needed to grow the business, which also sells its babkas at street markets and wholesale to cafés and supermarkets.

Her advice for anyone looking to open a food business: First, roll up your sleeves and spend time behind a counter to learn how to deal with customers and get a handle on the industry.

“You really have to be on the job and get your hands dirty,” she says. “You don’t go to university to learn this.”