County fare
by Diana Cercone
Kendall Bajek never intended to run her own business. With a degree in marketing and entrepreneurship, she saw her end goal as a marketing consultant. But when she applied for jobs with a few marketing firms, she was told one of the requirements was she have an E.I.N. (an employer identification number assigned by the I.R.S.). Since most of the firms’ clients were entrepreneurs, they were looking for a candidate with experience in running her own business.
The Doylestown native already had experience managing a business, having worked at Jules Thin Crust after college as general manager, overseeing five of its locations. But starting a business from scratch, well, that would require something else.
It didn’t take her long to come up with a business plan. And one involving what she enjoyed doing: making empanadas. With the idea of making and selling her empanadas, Kendall launched her Doylestown business, Empanada Mama, in April of 2014.
At first, she says, she began by making 20 empanadas in her apartment and selling them to local businesses at lunchtime, such as at dtown tech, the Shell Station and Stratton Family Chiropractic in Doylestown. Word quickly spread, she says, helped greatly by the dtown tech staff posting photos of her empanadas on the company’s Facebook page. Just after two weeks of selling her first empanada, Kendall had orders for 100. “I wasn’t set up for such an explosion of orders,” she says. “I had no packaging yet. I was putting empanadas in anything I could put my hands on, including zip lock bags.”
She also enlisted her mom to come over and take charge of the empanadas in the oven while she made deliveries.
With only two oven racks at home, Kendall says, “I knew I had to go commercial. On May 5, 2014, I opened at Andres’ Wine & Cheese Shop [in the Marketplace in Doylestown] and stayed there until I opened here.” (Here is 21 Donaldson Street in Doylestown.)
So how did a Doylestown native learn how to make empanadas? “When I was growing up, there weren’t many ethnic restaurants in Doylestown,” she says. “But when I went to the University of Miami, I found an explosion of flavors, plus my palate was maturing.”
To read more about Empanada Mama, turn to page 160 in Spring 2016 of Bucks County Magazine.