The past few years have been a balancing act. As wonderful as it is to own a small business, it can also be a challenge as you navigate relationships and make decisions about career and associated risk. When I started Luumu at the end of summer 2017, many people thought I was opening a bakery. I knew from the beginning that maintaining a brick and mortar bakery store would not be a good fit for my life's ambitions. That is the beauty of owning your own business — you get to make your own decisions.

Luumu started selling directly to customers through the cottage food expemption from the State of MN, including the advanced level training through the U of MN extension school. That same fall, I also received ServeSafe training, which would allow me to be a kitchen manager in an industrial kitchen. I am very glad to have taken these more advanced professional food-safety courses. I learned a lot and refer to my course materials often when developing recipes and also while cooking day to day just for myself.

Luumu has sold baked goods at pop-up art fairs and other local MN markets, but we had also been allowing small personal orders. With the onset of me receiving full-time work and the development of other personal life priorities, I decided to transition away from the one-off personal order fulfillment and make market sales more infrequent as well. Many customers lamented this decision, but again, as the busines owner, it is my decision.

I knew I wanted to make sure to continue to fulfill the mission of teaching and recipe sharing, in order to continue to sustain Finnish culture, so I have increased Luumu’s focus in these areas. We have also increased our offerings of Finnish language tutoring to include small group sessions and multi-level free virtual guided weekly conversation hour. I also decided that I wanted to try something uncharted this year: teach a few local coffee/cafe owners how to make some Finnish treats to sell.

In order to do this, I identified a few places in the Saint Paul and Minneapolis area that are some of my favorites already and seem to align with Luumu’s aesthetic and community-oriented culture. I asked around to figure out contact info for business owners and sent off emails. I heard back from one of the three I sent proposals to. We met and discussed. She tried out the recipes from the Luumu page, I came in to share some ruisleipä (sourdough rye bread) starter, and walked her through the baking processes for ruisleipä, korvapuusti and pulla. Exchanges of text messages, calls and emails filled in the details, which led to our first weekend of collaboration last Saturday at Ginkgo’s Saint Paul location on Snelling!

It is amazing to work with a well-established business and its owner to begin to offer some classic Finnish treats to our local Minneapolis-Saint Paul community. The next round of Finnish treats will be available for purchase from Ginkgo on Saturday, August 7th. Pre-orders encouraged, but not required. If you would like to pre-order, please call Ginkgo at (651) 645-2647.

Luumu also hopes to identify a few more businesses that would like to learn how to make Finnish treats to sell to their customers. If you own or know of a business that could be a good fit, please email us! We are hoping to spread Finnish treats far and wide, but are especially focused on the Twin Cities metro area suburbs, Duluth/North Shore area, and Iron Range in Minnesota, although out-of-state collaboration is not out of the question. For more information or to submit a suggestion, please email us at luumuabc@gmail.com.

—Elizabeth “Helvi” Brauer

@luumuabc