Bored woman turns home into ‘baking studio’

Aidah @ Jacqueline with her homemade bread and buns at her ‘Baking Studio’ in Taman Semarak.

TAWAU: Due to being bored staying at home amidst the Covid-19 pandemic that has seen many businesses going bust, Aidah Magno @ Jacqueline decided to turn her house at Taman Semarak into a ‘baking studio’ as she calls it.

Receiving encouragement from friends when she came up with the idea, Aidah started operating her Semarak Baking Studio on September 6, after obtaining a business license and necessary certificate to operate barely one month before a surge in Covid-19 cases resulted in four districts, Tawau, Lahad Daru, Semporna and Kunak being placed under Targeted Enhanced Movement Control Order (TEMCO).

She said when she was in Kuala Lumpur for three years, she used to bake homemade cakes and cookies after taking online courses to make extra income, thus when she came back to Tawau and got stuck due to Covid-19 she got the idea to use her skills and at the same time help others as her homemade bread and buns are cheaper which quickly became popular among customers, some of whom called her bread and buns ‘roti bajet’ (budget bread).

“I started this because I felt bored and used this house for the business which was previously rented out to tenants,” she said adding she had another house in the same residential.

She said she also does her delivery orders by planning her route to save time and travelling distance to retailers who requested for deliveries which she does not charge transportation cost.

Aidah said although she bakes bread and buns, the bigger quantity baking will be done only as per orders she receives which she still maintained with orders from camps in Kalabakan even though her orders have been cut by fifty percent since the start of TEMCO.

“I lost about 50 percent orders since the TEMCO but my orders from camps around Kalabakan area are still maintained,” she said when met at her baking studio.

At the moment, she said she employed an ex-baker, Mohd Jinu and her niece Edline and the three of the have been able to cope with orders with Mohd doing the baking, Edline assisting while she also assists in the kitchen and taking care of orders, stock and accounts.

For the moment, her ‘hot sales’ are French Bread and ‘pandesal’ (Filipino buns) among butter milk Spanish bread, and five other buns including another Filipino bun ëensamadaí a snail like bun using red bean and topped up with margarine and sugar.

On the Covid-19 effect, she said her customers cannot enter and select as before and orders are taken from outside the door, however she said the practice was there during the Movement Control Order and there is no problem as customers are used to it already.

Aidah said she is not afraid of not making any profits though many other businesses closed down, as she is doing it more to keep herself busy, moreover her business operates from her own home thus, she saved on rental.

“The risk is minimum and I don’t need to travel far because my other house is in another block,” she said.

On top of that, she said through friends, her business was promoted using WhatsApp, Facebook and word-of-mouth.

She said she is also doing charity by donating her bread and buns to mosques and at the moment is planning to approach NGOs who want to do charity by purchasing her buns which she will sell at a cheaper price.

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