26-year-old Binay Gurung started selling baked goods to his friends from home. Today, he owns a bakery shop which is further extending to a café at Nakhipot, Lalitpur.
Gurung took bakery classes after his high school graduation. During his bachelors, he decided to put his knowledge into action and started selling bakery items to his friends. That slowly escalated to him supplying bakery goods to different pastries. “We stopped this as it created more issues than profit for us”, Gurung says. “Our items were sent back to us lots of times as the cafes couldn’t sell it”, he explains.
He was quite frustrated with how business was turning out when he came across a tiny space to put up a shop. At the age of 21, Gurung established The GrG Bakery. Since his academic background was in Hotel Management, he did not have much idea about how to run a business. His fiancé, Samisha Rana Magar, helped him a lot to set it up.
Setting up the business was not an easy thing to do for Gurung. He had a lot of anxiety at the beginning. Coming from a background where nobody knew anything about running a business made him less confident too. “I come from a family of armies. Nobody in my family could give me advice and that made me more anxious”, he says. “A lot of money was invested and I was very unsure of the response I would get. I was constantly worried about failing horribly”, he adds.
However, Gurung was proven wrong by the immense support people showed towards his business. “I was just 21 years old when I started this business; however, there were loads of people who bought from me and I am really grateful for them”, he says
With the recent partnership with his childhood friend Anjil Rai, the bakery shop is now extended to become a small café serving drinks and different food items. “Currently we serve beverages. We also started serving French fries recently,”, he says. “We also are planning to add burgers and other food items in our menu”, he adds.
Gurung originally had plans to go to Bangalore for further studies but he couldn’t due to the pandemic. So, instead he focused on his business. While it has only been about two months since they shifted at their current location at Nakhipot, the business is growing.
And now all the staff working at the bakery is youngsters, some are still in colleges. The GrG Bakery has provided a wonderful empowerment opportunity for young adults. The workers are trained at the bakery itself. “My team handles everything right now. I only focus on running the business these days”, he says.
The bakery also has delivery services but only limits to places like Koteshwor, Kiritpur, Bhaisepati etc. “We also have orders coming in from Australia to deliver items here in Kathmandu”, Gurung says.
Gurung also receives complains and bad reviews at times. Nonetheless, he takes it positively and sees it as a learning opportunity. “Our main focus has and always will be the quality of our products. We make sure we do not sell stale food. We rather bake items after we receive an order than keep it ready-made”, he explains.
Red velvet and Choc-vanilla cakes are the most selling items of the bakery. Gurung talks about the knowledge of the right choice while purchasing bakery items, which according to him, not a lot of people have. “We recommend taking vanilla items if there are older people in the family. If there are children in the family, we advise them to take strawberry and chocolate flavoured items”, he says. “Choc-vanilla is always a safe option”, he adds.
Gurung still plans to go the UK in the near future for further studies in baking. “After I get the required certifications, I want to open an institute to create skilled manpower. I want to open a franchise of my bakery and use the manpower I create”, he says.
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