When is katherine kallinis birthday

In our business, that means using top-shelf ingredients like Valrhona cococa from France, Madagascar Bourbon vanilla, European style butter — and not taking any shortcuts. Second, we took the philosophy that each location should be a destination. We are very focused on choosing the best real estate for our bakeries in each of the cities where we have stores. We also design each store with an open concept so that when customers walk in, they can see the cupcakes being baked, frosted, and decorated — the entire experience is very visual.

Finally, we are focused on high-touch exemplary customer service. In particular, we focus on hiring people who are as passionate about Georgetown Cupcake as we are. Shortly after we first opened, Frank Bruni, the restaurant critic at The New York Times at the time, visited our bakery and wrote a glowing review of our cupcakes.

We also earned rave reviews from other respected food critics, as well as baked alongside Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey on their talk shows. Having validation from respected food critics and influencers early on definitely helped us build our reputation as serious bakers and as a serious business. Initially we were apprehensive, but one thing we learned when starting Georgetown Cupcake was to always keep an open-mind and to embrace new opportunities.

Our television show has been an amazing experience for us —to share our entrepreneurial experience and encourage other women to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams.

We get so many emails and letters from fans who want to start their own businesses and we love that we are able to share our experience with them — the highs and the lows — and it makes it less scary for them. We learned to embrace all of the daily ups and downs, and to actually love them since they are all part of the experience.

Doing a television show definitely had an impact on our business —people from all over the world are now familiar with Georgetown Cupcake. However, had we not had the opportunity to do a television show, our basic approach to operating and growing the business would not have changed.

The two of us are still intimately involved in running the day-to-day operations of our business because we love that aspect of it and we would still have taken the same disciplined approach to expansion to new cities regardless of whether or not the television opportunity had arisen.

For us, the most challenging aspect of running a food and specialty retail business is managing growth while maintaining our quality and what makes our brand special. Growing any business also forces you to confront unexpected challenges every day, and dealing with these challenges can often be unnerving and cause you to lose focus.

To maintain our best-in-class quality while scaling, we have taken a very thoughtful approach to expanding to different cities. We are very selective with respect to real estate and opening new locations. We also take a very hands-on approach to managing the day-to-day operations of each location and spend a lot of time personally communicating with each of them. Our corporate structure is very flat — each layer of management increases the distance between the two of us and our customers.

The difference between success and failure is your level of preparation and readiness to act. If you plan ahead, then unexpected events are less stressful and easier to deal with when they do happen. For example, we had barely been open in business in New York City for six months when Hurricane Sandy hit our store in SoHo in lower Manhattan, forcing us to shut down for a week.

For a new business, this can be a devastating loss of momentum. However, we used our national shipping capabilities to service our customers in New York City instead and were able to respond quickly.

When we started, we also just focused on making our one location in Georgetown successful. We are very big proponents of data-driven decision-making. We collect data everywhere we can in our business. Specifically, we analyze our shipping data to see where our cupcakes are going and where are customers are, and use this data to inform our decisions on which new cities to enter.

Since we opened in , our goal has been to focus on one product and to make it best-in-class. Our recipes have not changed, and we continue to bake our cupcakes from the best ingredients, to create a unique in-store experience for our customers, and to offer an impeccable customer service experience for everyone who comes into any of our stores. Consumers make decisions not just on price and convenience, but ultimately they seek out value.

Katherine Kallinis Berman. Virtual Event: Please Contact. See Similar Speakers. More About Katherine Kallinis Berman. Need Instant Answers? Booking Agency Disclaimer:. Popular Topics. AAE is one of the premier celebrity booking agencies and top keynote speakers bureaus in the world. To honor the Army and celebrate those who have served, members of the military are invited to bring their sweet tooth and their families to one of several Georgetown Cupcake shops across the country Friday, where free cupcakes are being offered in celebration of the Army's th birthday.

Their cupcakes have proved to be a success, and the company now has several shops across the country, including Washington, D. Cupcake," where the pair has baked up a life-size taxi and the world's largest cupcake. Special Friday menu offerings will include a camouflage cupcake. It's the second year in a row the camo cupcake has appeared, although last year it wasn't in shops: It was used to build a special one-ton tank with a fully functional cupcake canon.

Given to the Pentagon by the baking sisters as part the celebration for the Army's th birthday, the tasty tank was made of 5, camouflage cupcakes and pounds of camouflage fondant.