“Bite Me” - Cupcakes call out to you!
Coco loves to eat cupcakes. Like most other dogs, this little pug also loves following his mistress around the house, especially if she brought home some of his favourite cupcakes. But those yummy cupcakes with frostings on them are not yummy for Coco’s tummy. So his worried mistress had to carefully take the frosting off before she fed him each time. This got Divya Ramasami (friend of Coco’s mistress) thinking.While starting her cupcakes company, Bite Me (she means the cupcakes) at home, Divya decided to also make cupcakes (called pup cakes) as a special treat for dogs. Made out of all natural flavours like apple, banana and vanilla, pup cakes are made to suit a dog’s diet. “I’ve tasted it myself, it’s really moist and yummy,” says Divya.
A weakness that began in her San Francisco kitchen; it is her love for baking and eating exotic foods that has translated into Bite Me back home in India. Bite Me primarily offers a wide variety of cocktail cupcakes (for human adults apart from the pup cakes for dogs) that include Black forest, Oreo, Crunchy Vanilla, Ganache, Mint Chocolate, White Russian, Mocha Arabica and other flavours. They bake an assortment of four different flavours each day with a dozen regular cupcakes at Rs.1100 and two dozen minis at Rs.1200.“With food, first you eat with your eyes. If food is presented horribly, you will most certainly be turned off. The design sensibility that I’ve learnt at NIFT helps me make the product look luxurious, rich and sensuous, that is also clean and pleasing to the eyes,” says this designer-turned-cupcake baking entrepreneur.
While the age of Bite Me’s customers could be anywhere between 15to45, most of them are women customers who order for all the people they love – siblings, parents, spouse, children, co-workers etc. Interestingly, Divya also has a very thoughtful segment of husbands and boyfriends buying cupcakes for the women in their lives (a cue for all the men reading this story).Like most startups these days, this 10month old startup also uses social media and word of mouth marketing to let Bangaloreans know about Bite Me and their delicious treats. With family funding and a small team that includes herself and her husband, Kingsley (who is the delivery man and also runs his own startup), Divya hopes to soon open their first cupcake shop and over time grow into a chain.
“When I began experimenting flavours in my kitchen here in Bangalore, one time I packed some cupcakes for my maid, who speaks only Telugu. The next day when I asked her how she liked them, her reply was, ‘you don’t know Telugu, but in Telugu we say suparu, suparu’ (read super). That was so endearing and encouraging,” shares Divya.For that super and many more to come (as creamy as it gets), we wish Divya all the best.
If you are in Bangalore and would like to order some yummy treats from BiteMe, you can visit their website or facebook page.
