June 3, 2022

Owner Lauren Lavin is planning to wind down her baking business, Bakologie, and change career paths.

Lavin started the business in late 2015 after learning to decorate cakes and evolved it about a year ago to also offer cookies.

She recently began a partnership to provide different cookies each month to Breadsmith in Sioux Falls.

Lavin announced this week that she plans to attend the University of Iowa this fall and pursue a Ph.D. in health services and policy.

“In two months, I will be marking the end of what served as an equally wonderful and challenging chapter of my life,” she wrote. “My life will forever be intertwined with sugar and butter, countless bakery visits and the eternal quest for the best cinnamon roll. I mean that is coursing through my veins — just like all that Diet Coke. As I get closer to closing this chapter, I have become more and more certain that this part of my life has unfolded exactly as it was intended to.”

She also was candid about the toll being a successful founder can take.

At 22, Lavin was working 60 hours a week to keep up and still operating out of her parents’ kitchen.

She realized it wasn’t sustainable long term.

“With custom cakes, it is not scalable. It takes time regardless of what you’re doing, and it’s really tied to me, which is a blessing and a curse in this business,” Lavin said.

“I feel like everyone, especially lately this side hustle culture is coupled with the idea that being an entrepreneur is glamorous. I didn’t see any of the ‘you determine your own schedule.’ As far as being a freedom-loving entrepreneur, I felt none of that, and that was partly the way I structured it.”

Lavin also always has been academically inclined and thrived in school settings, she said.

“And it takes a lot of brains and skill to run a business, but it’s definitely different than the academic setting I thrived in for so long. That was my jam,” she said. “I wasn’t sporty, I was definitely a nerd, so I missed that.”

She hasn’t ruled out finding some way to keep her products in the marketplace but has no immediate plans.

Breadsmith plans to keep quarter-pound gourmet cookies on the menu, owner Susie Patrick said.

“It’s been a great partnership. We are going to continue with a quarter-pound gourmet cookie by developing recipes under the Breadsmith brand. We will continue with the same concept and have four new fun flavors each month,” she said.

June offerings are Blueberry Cheesecake, Bourbon Brown Sugar, Carrot Cake and Chocolate Hazelnut, available anytime after 10 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays at the four Sioux Falls Breadsmith locations.

Customers are encouraged to preorder, and large event orders for regular or catering-sized cookies are available.