San Mateo Daily Journal
Burlingame's Lizzy Detert has a passion for baking
A love of baking from a young age led to a farmers’ market booth, a pandemic popup and now a full-fledged brick-and-mortar shop on Burlingame Avenue for Busy Lizzy’s Baked Goods.
“Ever since I was a little kid, I loved to bake and cook and watched Food Network honestly instead of cartoons,” said Lizzy Detert, 26, the shop’s founder and namesake. “And that kind of sparked the interest for me. And that’s really how I learned to bake.”
She would bake for family parties, get-togethers and birthdays. Then at a Christmas party, people told her she should start selling them. A couple months later, she was walking through the farmers’ market in Burlingame with her mom who told her, ‘why don’t you try, you know, what do you have to lose, just set up a stand and see what happens.
She started at the farmers’ market in May of 2018 and sold out within two hours her first day and continued to sell out after that. She started baking out of her parents’ kitchen for two years, using the dining room as the cooling section, and the kitchen as the packaging area.
When the pandemic hit, she stopped going to the farmers’ market for about two months.
“When we went back, people were just so happy and said, gosh this is really what I need, honestly it was comfort in a cookie, comfort in baked goods,” she said. Her favorite cookies are the caramel oatmeal pretzel and the snickerdoodle. People’s favorites right now are the s’mores cookie and bar, cookies n’ cream cookie and, of course, chocolate chip.
During the pandemic, she started a popup shop on Burlingame Avenue for six months. She built out her own commercial kitchen at the back of Preston’s Candy and Ice Cream on Broadway in August of last year, which allowed her to expand the business more and produce enough to get into the popup, she said.
“I knew I always wanted a storefront but didn’t know exactly how much work it would be. So it was kind of a trial run to see, OK how is this going to be? And that was so successful,” she said.
Afterwards, she signed the lease for her current storefront space at 1231 Burlingame Ave. which her sister designed. It opened May 22. She’s now looking for a new kitchen space as it’s been outgrown during the last six months.
“She did it all on her own, she saved all of her money from the farmers’ market. We as parents just kept supporting her,” said Yvonne Detert, Lizzy Detert’s mother.
“I received so much help from my family who guided me through this whole entire process. I like to say it is my business but, in a way, it’s kind of a family business,” she said.
Her staff consists of two part-time employees who work in the kitchen and four female high schoolers or soon to be graduating high school.
“Part of my business plan was to teach young women especially, how to be in the business world,” she said. “A lot of my employees, this is their first job.”
Her advice to others who wish to start their own business is to follow your passion. When she started, she wanted things to be perfect first but her grandfather inspired her to go for it.
“My grandpa, who passed away since, he said, ‘you know, just do it. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Just get out there and start it and see if it’s going to be successful,’” she said.
Busy Lizzy’s cookies can be ordered online at https://www.busylizzysbakedgoods.com/shop and can be bought at the storefront at 1231 Burlingame Ave. Her cookies are also sold at the 11 Caffe Central locations and at Preston’s Candy and Ice Cream on Broadway.
(650) 344-5200, ext. 105
