I just want to take a moment to toot my own horn!
A little background: Anyone who knows me knows that I bake on the side. My friend Sammi and I started baking back in 2014. I had been baking kringla using my great grandma's recipe for a few years at that point but was still clumsy in my process. Sammi wanted to learn how to make it so I taught her what I knew, and then we honed our kringla skills. One thing about the two of us: we work SO well together! We worked retail together and have always had fun while being incredibly productive. In business, we work really well together because I'm the creative one and Sammi is so good at business stuff in addition to both of us being all in no matter what wacky idea the other one has.
In 2015, after figuring out our process, we decided we wanted to sell at the Humboldt Farmers Market. We did regular farmers markets and some events that year. We named our bakery Three Rivers Kringla. I made a logo, and I'm still proud of how good it is. It's perfect and far exceeded where I thought my Photoshop skills were at that time. What we didn't realize when we started selling our goodies was how nostalgic people were for kringla. It still blows my mind how everything happened. I can't even remember what choices we made or pinpoint when anything happened, it just all fell together so perfectly.
Unfortunately, we both moved away from Humboldt, made career changes, and got married. Basically, life got in the way and left us no time for baking. Sammi has moved back to the area and has two kiddos. I'm still on the other side of the state doing my thing. For the last few years we've only opened up ordering during the holidays, and it's kind of been we each do solo what we each have time for. I've added caramel rolls to my list of specialty items and there are a handful of families that HAVE TO have them for Christmas. I love that so much. That does mean November-December 20th is always a blur for me.
It's been a lot more work (and honestly less fun) to solo bake, but thankfully this year we've been able to get together to bake and start planning some events. If you've been following us you've probably seen us opening up for orders every few months and offer fun specials. It's been exciting to get back to baking together more regularly again!
Now that you're all caught up I want to talk about the things I've recently designed for Three Rivers Kringla. I'm so proud of myself! It feels like everything just "clicked" in my brain and everything turned out awesome! The last/first time I designed business cards and stickers they had our maiden names on them. Safe to say it had been awhile and it was time to get some new ones made.
I've made a few seasonal menus and flyers in the last year, but I made a couple new ones this month including a new "generic" menu for all of the goodies we offer right now and flyers for our flavored kringla bundles coming up for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Flavored kringla always has one of two responses "EW" and "YUM" and that's exactly why we do it. Not everyone likes kringla, but they are intrigued enough to try a flavor they like. It may not be traditional, but it helps spread the love of kringla.
If you'd like to you can download the menu and flyers above.
If you're in the Humboldt, IA or Waterloo, IA area you can download the form below to order!
New to our event setup is a banner, sized 6ft x 2ft. We were trying to figure out why we never had one before. I'm not sure if they weren't available or affordable before, but they are so now we have one! I designed it so we can velcro menus on either side so we can change that out as we need to without printing a whole new banner.
Last weekend we did an event for the first time in a long while at the Humboldt County Fair. It was nice to hang out and dream about all the things our little business could do. Before the second day of the event we decided to take a headshot that isn't from a cell phone.
Our bakery may be a side thing we do, but we put all the extra energy we can into it! I think I can safely say from both of us that we are so grateful for everyone who supports us and enjoys what we do. We're hoping and planning to do more from here on out and that's equally exciting, terrifying, and exhausting, but I wouldn't have it any other way!
💜
-Kelsey