In this new series, TCU Magazine visits with alumni in the food and beverage industry. Send recommendations to tcumagazine@tcu.edu.

Lizzy Detert ’17 combined her love for baking and degrees in psychology, business and nutrition when she opened her shop, Busy Lizzy’s Baked Goods, in 2018. She started by selling desserts at her local farmers’ market and now has a successful brick-and-mortar store in Burlingame, California.  

When did you know baking was your passion? Can you share a memory with me? 

As a child, I grew up baking. I would watch Food Network instead of cartoons when I was little. I would always bake for different gatherings or family functions. I would be at the dinner table mixing a bunch of things, and always wanting to be in the kitchen has led me to the passion of baking and continuing it into a business. 

After graduating — I was working for my dad at the time — I brought cookies over to a family party, and everybody said, “You should try to sell these,” and I said, “Oh yeah, right, it’s never gonna sell.”

I started selling at the farmers’ market, and we would sell out every weekend. 

How did your bakery get its name? 

It was my nickname as a kid. I would always be mixing different things at the dining table when I was really little, or I would want to help my parents with different tasks. I even helped my dad pay the bills when I was little. I always wanted to be busy, so it was ‘Busy Lizzy.’ 

Lizzy Detert would “watch Food Network instead of cartoons” as a kid. Now, she runs Busy Lizzy’s Baked Goods, the moniker a nod to her childhood nickname. Courtesy of Busy Lizzy’s Baked Goods

How many different desserts do you have?  

We have a lot. We have a rotating menu featuring our best sellers, which typically include about four styles of cookies, three styles of bars, our banana bread and our bread pudding. Those are in the store every day. Then, we rotate the other seasonal options once to twice a week.

I would say we have about 50 different items that get rotated throughout the week. But there are probably about 25 products that we sell daily. 

Over the years, what do you feel has helped your business grow the most?

Creating an amazing product that you know your customers are going to love and just having return customers. And then social media, in terms of marketing, [that] was something I had to learn. But it has helped expand to people’s eyes, instead of just the local people that live around the store.   

Now, people from New York and L.A. are ordering just because they came across our Instagram page and went to our website. 

What’s something you want readers to know about your bakery that they may not know already? 

It’s not just our storefront and online presence; we’re in grocery stores around the Bay Area. And we’re growing into more markets as well. 

[Busy Lizzy’s] is a small female-run business that the owner is very hands-on and passionate about. You can really see that in the product. 

It’s amazing running your own business, but you definitely have to have a passion for it. It helps me continue to come up with new recipes and expand the business even more.