15. Quarantine Cakes – How Amanda Nguyen Saved Her Business and 100’s of other businesses

Amanda Nguyen is the Founder and CEO of the booming San Francisco bake shop, Butter&. Amanda is the first guest to come back onto the Trailblazer Show for the 2nd time. We discuss how Butter& is not only surviving COVID-19, but actually thriving in this new environment. Since COVID-19 and the invention of “Quarantine Cakes” which in the past several weeks have been featured by USA Today and twice by People Magazine.

In this podcast, we discuss Amanda’s initial reaction after realizing business was being decimated by covid-19, how sticking to the core values of employee centricity helped Amanda come up with the idea for Quarantine cakes, what happened when the quarantine cake was launched, the list of cake makers Butter& compiled from all over the world and the 100’s of potential jobs it has saved, how quarantine cakes have broken the existing processes, and why empathy is more important than ever. At the end of the episode, Amanda goes into answering some of your questions. The questions you had after listening to the first episode with Amanda. Amanda goes into exactly the schedule in which cakes are being baked, and the secret sauce to Butter&’s spectacular cakes!

There is a lot of doom and gloom out in the world right now, but there are also many examples of successful adaptations to this new environment. My hope is that this interview with Amanda gives you and your loved ones the hope we all need to make it through this crisis and come out on the other side even stronger. Please enjoy this conversation with Amanda Nguyen.

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts.

This podcast is sponsored by my friends at AmicoTea. My good friend, Danny at Amico tea sources super high quality single origin teas from craftsman tea farmers and makers. These farmers cultivate spectacular tea plants in the ultra pristine protected mountain ranges of China.

I used to drink coffee every single morning. I would buy freshly roasted coffee 2x/month, grind the beans with a baratza burr grinder and make a good cup of drip coffee. For years, I added butter and coconut oil in place of creamer for my coffee too. The purpose of the added fat was for slower caffeine release and sustained energy throughout the day but for CALM mental clarity and daily caffeine, well cultivated, single origin tea has far outperformed any coffee concoction I’ve tested.

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Selected Links From The Episode

Butterand.com

Instagram handle – @butter_and

Show Notes

3:12 First steps Amanda took when realizing how much COVID-19 was negatively impacting business

11:35 What happened when Quarantine cakes were launched

16:10 How Butter&’s values and principles were tested

18:49 How Butter& and Quarantine Cake potentially saved 100’s of businesses

22:30 Everything that broke when Quarantine Cake became successful

31:03 Empathy in the world of covid-19

37:30 How Butter& cakes are made step by step including the ultimate secret to making delicious butter cream

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