Sweet Success

After years of doing project management in the health care space, Kyoko Yamamoto ’01 was laid off from her job at a health care tech startup. She went back to freelance consulting, until her husband told her, “You don’t look very happy doing your job. Maybe this is an opportunity.”

That was the push she needed to give professional baking a shot. Yamamoto had been baking for years, tweaking and developing recipes, bringing baked goods to work, and taking custom orders from coworkers and friends. “I think it was a long time coming,” she says. Her business, Petite Sakura, just marked its two-year anniversary, and Yamamoto is working

harder than ever fulfilling custom orders; attending major markets such as the SoWa Winter Festival in Boston, Massachusetts, where she lives; and supplying two stores — Trove on Tremont on the South End and DeLuca’s Market in Beacon Hill — with baked goods.

Yamamoto specializes in Japanese and Asian-inspired cakes, cookies, and other delicacies. Her favorite and most popular treat is her “maple miso spice cookie,” which she describes as “a sweet and savory cookie — I think it’s a good match of the Japanese heritage and New England vibe.”

Her success has exceeded her expectations. She now splits time between her home kitchen and a commercial incubator kitchen that gives her the support she needs to grow and work toward an eventual brick-and-mortar shop.

It can be intense, Yamamoto says, but yes, she is now happier. “Even though I’m exhausted, there’s a definite satisfaction in owning your own business and challenging yourself,” she says.

“Knowing that I can face these challenges and I can do it, that’s something I learned at Bryn Mawr and use in my career and life in general.”

petitesakura.com

@petitesakurabakery