Today we’d like to introduce you to Sascha Biesi.
Hi Sascha, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
In January 2010, I weighed less than 100 pounds. I had just had 13 bilateral electric shock treatments for severe bipolar depression. I was at rock bottom. I walked away from the life I no longer recognized into the arms of my best friend of almost 20 years. We have now been together as a couple for 11. Yauss was determined to help me regain my sense of self and health. We started in the kitchen because I needed to eat but what ended up happening is beyond what we could have imagined. I already knew vegan baking. My daughter was born with allergies. But now, so many years later, I used my grandmother’s recipe box to try and remember things, my memory was so bad, especially short-term. I couldn’t even remember how many cups of flour when I first would look away from the recipe. Yauss was so patient. I fed her my creations and I slowly became healthy again.
I continued baking vegan cakes for my daughter’s class birthdays because it was easy and kids often have allergies anyway. I’m careful about the amount of sugar I use. Sometime in 2012, Yauss’s mom started noticing the cupcake craze and compared it to what we were baking at home. She was the one who first mentioned that we should start a business selling cupcakes. Yauss and I both graciously declined, it was so out of our comfort zone, Yauss was a professor and I was a writer. We had no experience in cupcake selling! Her mom persisted though, as a good Persian mother would, and made us an offer we couldn’t refuse: she would give us the starting capitol and we would go for it. If it worked it worked, if not, at least we tried.
In 2013, we started Skull & Cakebones without really knowing what direction we wanted to take, we got into Whole Foods right away. That set us off on this amazing journey. We did wholesale for three years but there were still recipes inside of me. Yauss quit her job and turned to branding full-time. She is the Skull, the brains of the operation. I’m the Cakebones, or the skeleton, the recipes. In 2016 we moved into the space we currently occupy. It wasn’t long before we turned the front into our retail space, selling everything from baked goods to avocado toast. While I’m in the kitchen creating recipes, Yauss is building our storefront from scratch and making labels for products. We make a great team.
As the Hill Country’s first and only locally sourced vegan craft bakery, we pride ourselves on serving the best food we can. We love tricking people who don’t know we don’t use butter or eggs, it’s thrilling to see them be pleasantly surprised.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Owning a small business is never a smooth road. We’ve been ripped off and threatened and treated like “girls”. We’ve overcome family emergencies and mental illnesses and even broken bones. The pandemic was the toughest challenge though. We were on a growth trajectory before that and then we flatlined. We’ve pivoted and turned ourselves around and not let a single member of our team go. Nothing stops us.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
We specialize in vegan food. Our tagline is “shh, they’re vegan” because we pride ourselves in making delicious things without animal products that fool even the strictest meat-eaters. We are most proud of the fact that we went from only making cupcakes to having a full-service menu, offering lunch and brunch items.
We love surprises, fun facts and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
I suffer from a myriad of mental health conditions in addition to other physics and mental health concerns. When I leave the house for the kitchen, my second home, I still need to “shine it on” and act like I feel better than I do. Most everyone knows this about me but what they don’t know is how much they mean to me and how safe I feel around them.
Contact Info:
- Email: Info@skullandcakebones.com
- Website: www.skullandcakebones.com
- Instagram: @skullandcakebones
- Facebook: @skullandcakebones
Image Credits
Yauss Berenji
