Four times a week, 16-year-old Olivia Rife flicks on the lights of her bakery at 7 a.m., on the second floor of a grey, plain brick building in Richlands, and begins preparing to bake today’s sweet goods.
Usually, that means cupcakes, assorted squares and brownies, fondue strawberries, Oreo cake pops, and her specialty: the giant chocolate chip cookies she and her clients have come to love so much.
Olivia, a native Virginian, has been at it—running her own bakery in a commercial location on Grayson Avenue—for over a month. Impressive for an 11th-grader.
Baking is a niche she consciously selected as a potential career, and her passion. “It really brings me happiness and joy,” Olivia told The Epoch Times. “I’m 100 percent self-taught.”
This she managed by checking on YouTube and Instagram for the latest pastry projects explained in detail, to make the baking process a breeze, discover techniques used by the pros, and build up her repertoire.
Making it more than just a hobby, the real springboard for Olivia to launch her bakery business, Liv-Y-Licious, was boredom. The COVID lockdowns left Olivia missing her friends and classmates.
Her giant cookies baked at home were where it all started, she said. But the kitchen really heated up when she baked an immaculate German chocolate birthday cake for her dad’s friend, which, Olivia says, everyone said was “delicious” and “definitely didn’t look like a cake that somebody had made on their first try.”
From there, the formation of Olivia’s business unfolded in stages:
Firstly, selling cookies and “super detailed” custom cakes from home—from Hot Wheels birthday themes to leopard skin-styled icing.
Next, Olivia said, she forged out of her comfort zone and began her Facebook marketing operations.
Finally, when Liv-Y-Licious and Oliva’s equipment grew too much for home, it was moved into her dad’s building. He is a contractor and lent her the upstairs.
“It took about a year to remodel,” she said. “After that, I just opened up.” The ribbon-cutting ceremony was held in May.
And the Richlands community showed up; whether buying pastries or sharing her photos online, the local support has been amazing, she says.
Regularly selling out her wares, the bakery business has been good to Olivia but leaves her with little spare time. For someone still in high school, running a business means doing less of what other 16-year-olds tend to focus on.
Olivia tries to strike a “perfect balance” by hanging out with friends on weekends and handling her homeschool work in the evenings. The bakery is open four days a week, she says, though business usually eats up five or six.
To help tackle the workload, her mom and sister sometimes join Olivia in the bakery.
One of the biggest rewards of running Liv-Y-Licious, she says—besides meeting “super great” people, and devouring knee wobblingly-scrumptious pastries—is she’s building a head start for the future.
“I won’t have to work as hard when I’m older if I do it now,” she said with a laugh.
