How Baked By Opy Founder Turned A Side Hustle Into A Successful Business
How Baked By Opy Founder Turned A Side Hustle Into A Successful Business. ‘Baked by Opy’ started as a side hustle while Omphile Magasa was still employed as an IT mainframe storage specialist at a prestigious multinational technology company. It was started with no outside investments, only with the savings Magasa accrued.
At the end of 2017, she was retrenched and in a desperate bid to keep her finances afloat, Magasa decided to fully dedicate herself to this new enterprise. Four years later, ‘Baked by Opy’ has a loyal customer base across the province with some of its sweet treats being supplied to BelAir, Bedfordview and Blackheath SuperSpars.
“Our rainbow cakes are our most popular items as we don’t only supply them to the above mentioned Spars, but customers order these directly from us too. It brings me a lot of joy and peace to employ someone who is in need of a job, to know that someone can put food on the table, have shelter or buy their kids clothes. It was never an option for me to let any of my staff go during these hard times and instead I told them that we just need to keep working, somehow God always sees us through.” Magasa told Independent Online.
The local baking business is also a 100% black female owned business which employs four other young females. “My name Omphile means ‘to give or has given’ and I believe I am living through my name,” she explained.
“It has been up and down but I take each day’s challenges as they come. I have a very strong team that is committed to their work and the success of the business as much as I am, so when times are not good, at least we are all still motivated as a team. I would say that time management and processes are two things that they both have in common. I deal with clients who need their products on specific days and times so it’s very important to have good time management skills and the processes come in very handy as this allows my staff to be able to execute the same work standards even in my absence.” Magasa added.
