Baking to Support Foster-Care Children with Nicole Wu
Nicole Wu ’20 is our Student Body Vice President and a Stories Editor for the Pixel Journal. Outside of entrepreneurship and school, she loves to bake, play the piano (especially Disney music and showtunes), and drink boba tea. Nicole is appreciated for her dependability, consideration for others, and creativity — qualities that come together in her business, Heavenly Hope Kitchen.
Nicole’s family has always supported entrepreneurship: “My parents run multiple small businesses, and I’ve been involved ever since I was five.” She began developing her online bakery, Heavenly Hope Kitchen, in 2016 and finally launched it in January 2019. People order cookies online, and she ships them anywhere in the United States. “The process started with just creating a document with ideas for a business that would also help other people. I immediately settled on baking because it has been a passion of mine for a long time,” she says.
Nicole experimented with a wide variety of cookie recipes, based off recipes that she had started using five to six years ago. She ultimately chose to sell her three favorite flavors: double chocolate, celebration, and monster. Her personal favorite is the double chocolate: “I can never pass up anything chocolate, and the deep, dark chocolate flavor in those cookies is no exception.” What’s the process of baking cookies like for Nicole? By now, she has made them so many times that it only takes about twenty minutes to make the dough, which she chills in the fridge for a couple of hours. She then scoops and shapes the dough and freezes it overnight before popping it in the oven to bake. “Outside of the time baking cookies, I don’t spend too much time on the bakery, though I’m hoping to be able to spend more time on marketing this year,” Nicole says, “To balance the bakery with school, I write it into my to-do list for the day just like all my other assignments so that I don’t forget.”
“A highlight has definitely been testing the cookie recipes as well as building a website,” Nicole adds. Heavenly Hope Kitchen’s website was built using Squarespace, an easy-to-use, ‘what you see is what you get’ (WYSIWYG) platform. “It was fun to experiment with different styles, fonts, and colors.” Nicole mentions that one of her biggest challenges has been marketing: “I have never been much of a salesperson and am timid about putting myself — or my business — out there, but I am working on it and trying different methods to get the word out.”
In addition to baking and selling cookies, 51% of all proceeds from Heavenly Hope Kitchen are donated to a non-profit organization. At this point, Nicole has sponsored two charities so far: Miracles for Kids and Angel Armies.
“Once my business model was fully developed, I reached out to Miracles for Kids as my first spotlight organization. They were really accessible and super nice, and it was great to work with them,” Nicole says, “Miracles for Kids is an organization that provides financial support for families of critically-ill children. They have food, housing, and financial programs to help the families so that the families can focus on what’s most important — fighting for their child’s life.”
Angel Armies is an organization founded by Christian music artist Chris Tomlin and his wife, which equips and aids churches in fighting the child welfare system crisis, helping families and children as they walk the foster care path. “I chose both these charities because children have always been a cause close to my heart.”
As she reflects on what she has learned from Heavenly Hope Kitchen, Nicole shares, “I’ve learned just how much goes into building and running a business. From shipping to ingredient costs to marketing, there are so many more aspects that are out of my comfort zone. I love to bake and can easily whip up batches and batches of cookies, but I’ve had to learn how to take the leap in the other aspects of business.” After she graduates from OHS, Nicole hopes to continue running Heavenly Hope Kitchen. “That will be difficult since I probably won’t have a kitchen at college,” Nicole admits, “However, since I’ll be staying in California, maybe I’ll come home every so often to fulfill orders or rent a kitchen near campus.”
Nicole has been a student at OHS for four years, and decided to enroll because she was looking for greater challenge and rigor than what homeschooling could offer. Her favorite class has been University-Level Literature with Dr. Kerr this year. “The discussions are so fascinating and like nothing I’ve ever experienced in an English class. The level of engagement and depth of ideas is amazing,” Nicole gushes. She also highly recommends attending Summer @ Stanford. “[It] was an unforgettable experience. I made such deep and lasting connections in those two weeks, and it really changed my last two years of OHS for the better.”
In line with her experiences at OHS, Nicole’s advice to younger OHS students is to “take advantage of every opportunity you have to make social connections! It takes effort given the nature of an online school, but it is so worth it.” For Nicole, OHS revealed to her how important a community is to her. “As a homeschooler from 1st-8th grade, I always thought I learned best on my own and didn’t need a classroom full of other people. But after four years at the OHS, I’ve grown in my ability to engage with others both personally and intellectually, and finding a community is now something that I am striving for in my future.”