I'm Shannon Radke and I'm one of the owners of Cinnaholic...
and I created the recipe.
I'm Florian Radke. I'm her husband.. and..
I believed in her recipe and then we started this business together.
I was probably in my early twenties
and...
I'd come home from work..
and just kinda destress and...
I started baking.
A friend of mine got me my first kitchen aid mixer
for Christmas.
When I was probably like twenty-four years old...
and I was just so excited.
And, like every week I would start baking things
and bringing them into work
and then it turned into every night.. and
(laughter)
started a giving away all my stuff to friends
I just.. I couldn't keep up with eating - how much I was baking.
Everything is soy-based.
So we don't use any milk or eggs
or any um sugar with bone char.
Our specialty is cinnamon rolls, obviously.
We have full size ones. We do cinnacakes...
where we kinda bake 'em all together
flip them over and frost them and decorate 'em.
We have our baby buns that are mini bite-size ones.
This summer I think we are going to be introducing
a kinda of like a cookie sandwhich
that has frosting in the middle sandwiched
between two of our chocolate chipped cookies.
And we have almost thirty different flavors of frosting
and I don't even know how many different toppings...
so.
I have a bachelor's degree
in multi-media arts and marketing.
And, I started in Berlin, Germany,
where I'm originally from.
And I worked for big corporate clients like
Heineken and MTV and Nike.
I remember the things that interested me the most
was a typography class.
And I think I used a lot of that typography class
actually for the first time
um, in creating our brand.
I actually used to be like this skater goth chic, so
I've always been into like black and white
and skulls.
We thought like every... every cupcake store
is like pink and cute and...
it is annoying.
So we thought, "Hey let's do something completely different."
We're really engaged in our social media.
We do.. we're on Twitter.
We're on Facebook.
We talk to our costumers whenever somebody posts
something on our wall, we answer right away.
The good thing is if people are on social media
they're searching for input.
They want information.
So you're not penetrating them with stuff they don't want to know.
They're looking for it.
"Thanks for trying though."
"No, thank you for trying them."
(laughter)
Find people that wanna to try your product.
Shannon brought a lot of her baking to work
they were all non-vegans and very anti-vegan.
And if they liked that...
then we knew it was good enough to put
on the market.
I have an accounting background.
So that was helpful too.
But, a lot of it, they don't teach you in class.
You kinda have to learn as you go.
I like the baking.
(laughter)
It is very soothing.
Uh, I also like the managerial aspect of it.
I work from home most of the time now.
I'm only in the store about one day a week
when I don't pop in and see how things are.
I like the customer service.
I like talking to people.
I like hearing what they think about product.
I like getting feedback.
I like seeing people's expressions on faces when they come in
and say like "OMG! So many flavors!"
That's really cool.