Online Baking Classes: About the Fun As Much as the Baking
Jessica McGovern created The Lincoln Apartment Bakery out of her kitchen 10 years ago. She talks about the amazing growth of her business, her love of teaching and about the difficulties and opportunities of the pandemic.
And to win a free online baking class (!), follow the instructions at the end of the article!
“I love teaching beginner bakers. That’s one of my favorite parts of the job. People who always thought that it was way too difficult or intimidating. I love seeing their reaction at how easy it can be and how quick and how delicious. I love the very end of a class full of beginner bakers, when they’re just saying “wow it’s so easy, nothing to be scared of, so good, I’m going to make this at home”. It’s wonderful” smiles Jess happily when talking about The Lincoln Apartment Bakery.
Jessica McGovern started The Lincoln Apartment Bakery about 10 years ago in Montreal, Canada. Intimate baking classes for all levels, they are just as much about the fun as about the baking.
“If we just tried to be a culinary class, there would be no magic there. But we are trying to be a fun learning experience, girly and cute. We are all for the Instagram photoshoot at the end, and people get cute bakery boxes to take away with them. What makes us special is that really personal touch, not that it’s culinary training” explains Jess.
A concept to demystify the intimidating science of baking
Jess started baking very young, with her mom and grandmother. Originally from Ireland, when she came to Canada, she realized that not everyone learns baking very young. And yet, people were always asking for recipes and for her to show them how it’s done. That’s why it’s called The Lincoln Apartment Bakery, it all started out as a very small thing out of her apartment on Lincoln Avenue.
She always hoped it would become a business, but started small. “I always advise someone who is thinking of quitting their job and starting a business to start it on the side. Keep your income during the week, and start it on Saturdays. That’s what I did and it just grew from there”.
As it got popular, Jess rented a kitchen, and it became a weekend thing. It grew again, and she was offered a TV show, and then she made a cookbook.
“It just snowballed from a very small thing unexpectedly. It’s not my professional background, I’m a journalist, not a professionally trained chef. But people seem to like my style of home cooking. Because there’s this feeling regarding baking that it’s a science, you have to be so precise, people are a little bit intimidated by it. And that’s not how I learned at all. I learned a very relaxed style of baking at home. So I wanted to pass that on to people and show them that it’s much simpler than they thought”.
All the recipes that Jess teaches are very accessible, simple. And people really seem to like this fun, relaxed style of baking. They often say at the end of a class, “oh, I didn’t realize that it was this easy”. Which is incredibly satisfying to Jess.
Teaching as a love for personal connections
Jess decided on teaching to bake rather than baking because she loves first and foremost the contact with people.
“I have great admiration for chefs and caterers, but I have no interest in standing by myself in a kitchen decorating 200 cupcakes for someone. I really love the personal connection with people, I love teaching, I love seeing people’s faces when they taste things, when they learn something that they didn’t know”.
Jess loves that moms come with daughters, sisters come together. They do a lot of bachelorette parties, “really great groups of women coming in and sharing that kind of moment together”. The Lincoln Apartment Bakery also teaches family groups and corporate events, where business teams find themselves interacting together in an unusual way.
“I love love love that personal connection. I would actually say that I love teaching more than baking”.
Mostly, they get people who are looking for baking plus a fun experience. They often come with friends or with family. “By the end of the class everyone’s friend, even if they came alone, which I think is very special” Jess smiles.
“If people are looking for somewhere where they can drink a nice cup of tea and take photos for Instagram and also learn, then they come to me. It’s people who want to bake but not too seriously” she laughs. “They want to enjoy the moment, they want to spend time with people they care about”.
For her, one of the reasons that the business works well is because SHE is the target audience. She knows what she would like from a two-hour baking class, and she provides just that.
300 classes later and there’s still magic in the air
Jess is all about human connection. For her, one of the biggest obstacles she had to overcome on her way to grow her business was finding good people to work for her.
“Finding people who were good at baking, but also had the right personality, and the right flexibility, that was key”.
And it was tough for a while. There’s only so much one person can do. She started small, with not a lot of budget to hire, and yet she needed help, with the social media, the accounting, the teaching, the cleaning.
And Jess wants passion and enthusiasm. Some recipes she had taught about 300 times. She finally passed it on to other teachers, so that she could start with a brand new one.
“But that’s important. That’s what I’m looking at when I look for the right personality in my teachers. It has to be someone who can teach the same class over and over again and still be excited about it. What’s special about us is that there’s magic there, you would never have thought that we taught the class 300 times, and that’s really important to me. That people feel we have enthusiasm and energy for every single class”.
The opportunities offered by online teaching
And in the midst of all of that, Covid hit. Jess didn’t immediately switch to online classes, because, like the rest of the world, she thought it would be 2 or 3 weeks. A nice break, after having worked so hard. But when they did, it was surprisingly great and popular.
“I’m so delighted that people are willing to get the ingredients and bake in their own kitchen! It’s been wonderful, because with the virtual classes, we were able to teach to people from all around the world. In the regular classes in Montreal, we usually just had local people. But now we can have one class with 6 people and someone’s from India and someone’s from Mexico, someone’s from the UK, and the US, and Germany. It’s really amazing to be able to reach so many new people”.
Jess and the team have been offering a lot of virtual classes since. There are three of them teaching, an all-women-run business. They all have different classes, different expertise.
Pivoting to online classes has been one of her biggest accomplishments recently. “We worked so hard to keep the magic of the in-person classes, to make people feel like they’re with us even though they’re not, to make the recipes work no matter whether people are in India or in Ottawa. I think that was a great accomplishment because the business would have probably died if we hadn’t been able to transition so successfully to virtual classes” she reflects.
The team makes it work by choosing the right recipes, the ones that they knew would be hard to mess up. Then, they always chat a little bit at the beginning of each class, to check on the level of people and adapt. They go very slowly. They ask the students to hold things before the camera to check them out. Rather than correct mistakes, they know where the mistakes usually happen and say “ok, before you mix this, let me tell you exactly what we are looking for in the batter” and they hold things up to the camera as well.
“It’s different. It’s hard that we don’t get to taste everything together at the end. We end the class when it all goes into the oven, we don’t see them tasting or enjoying it at the end. I do miss that part” sighs Jess.
But she does love parts of the virtual classes. “I have a baking virtual studio at home so I can kind of roll out of bed 5 minutes before and teach like that” she laughs.
“But I would love to keep teaching people from all around the world. I’m really hoping that after Covid we can have both in-person and virtual classes, if people are still willing to do things with us online”.
Charity baking class and masterclass
Jess always has a lot of things going, and too many plans for the future. The most recent thing she started doing is a monthly charity class.
“We are all going through this difficult time. But there are people who don’t even have clean water. I wanted to do something for people who really need help, so I started a monthly charity baking class online. People join and whatever they pay for the class goes directly to a charity. We have a different recipe every month, it’s been working really really well, we’ve made about 1000 dollars so far for cleaner water” she explains proudly.
The other big plan for this year is to record a video masterclass, that people could buy and download and play as many times as they want when trying out the recipe.
“It’s different from a class. If you’re making the recipe three weeks after the class, you don’t have the teacher in front of you anymore. But if you have a downloadable masterclass, then you can play it again. That’s the big project for this year”.
And as parting advice, she adds “Focus on what makes your business or your offering unique. Don’t try to be like everyone else”. That, for her, is the key to her success.
WIN A FREE ONLINE BAKING CLASS AT The Lincoln Apartment Bakery!!!
- Step 1: follow @lincolnapartmentbakery Instagram page
- Step 2: send a DM saying “I saw you in Mooi magazine!”
- At the end of the month, they will pick one person and send them a gift certificate for a spot in one of their online baking classes!
Follow Mooi Publication for more inspiring stories here
