Former Merced Sun-Star worker goes for her dream

Little Pink Boxes is nothing if not a family affair.

Founder Samantha Yniguez enlisted husband, Sam, a photographer at KSEE-TV in Fresno, three cousins, an aunt and even her four kids when she launched the specialty bakery last October.

Those cousins are Jessica Uriostegui and Bertha and Diana Meraz. Plus Samantha's parents watch her kids -- aged 13, 10, 7 and 5 -- while Mom puts in 16-hour days at the shop on Main Street.

Samantha worked seven years at the Sun-Star, her last post as director of advertising, before deciding to go for her dream last fall. At the Sun-Star she dealt with dozens of companies and business people each month. That experience, she believes, has helped her after starting her own.

"I see what businesses have done and not done," she says. "I saw that spending the money on advertising and marketing was OK. I knew what my return would be. You can have the best chef in the world, but if nobody knows about you, nobody knows about you."

Even the name came from her time at the Sun-Star. More than a year ago, she asked co-worker Jillian Nord, now the call center manager, what she thought of when she thought of a bakery. "I was trying to think of a visual icon," Nord recalls, "and all I could think of was little pink boxes that your birthday cake used to come in."

Yniguez mixes a healthy cup of community engagement in her business recipe. She understands she's part of a whole and has quickly become known for helping out where and how she can. Her first big philanthropic event was for the Merced County Rescue Mission, which was facing numbing shortfalls in donations for its free Christmas feed.

Since then she's chipped in to a Circle K (Kiwanis Club) fundraiser at UC Merced and donates something to somebody nearly every day, whether gift certificates or trays of cupcakes or cookies themselves. "They are so portable," she notes.

Valentine's Day was their busiest day so far. So busy they had to shut the doors for two hours in the middle of the day. They baked and sold 50 dozen cupcakes -- and there was a line of people waiting once they reopened. "That was a humbling experience," she recalls.

Flying off their shelves went cupcakes made with chocolate cherry Coke, peanut butter, vanilla, plus chocolate-covered strawberries and heart-shaped fudge brownies. And their most popular cupcake among the 55 they serve, red velvet, with cream-cheese icing and a taste between chocolate and vanilla.

Yniguez's mother managed a bakery, so she was exposed as a child to the smells and tastes, the presentation and design that she'd later try to repeat in Little Pink Boxes. "I've never been a great cook," she confesses, "but I can bake."

She uses social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, to full advantage to get the cyberword out about specials and other announcements.

And Yniguez freely admits she couldn't have gotten this far without two big breaks. One was that they moved into a downtown space that already had an oven and kitchen (courtesy of Amanda Bowers, wife of Sun-Star online editor Brandon Bowers, who ran her own bakery at the same site).

The other was huge family support. "Family will do things that employees won't," she says.

She and her cousins lace unexpected flavors into their creations -- bacon in a cupcake, for example, or a corndog cupcake with ketchup and butter cream. They make five different cookies every day, including the Cowboy Cookie, which is chocolate chip, oatmeal, coconut and walnut. They put parts of candy bars and ice cream in their cupcakes. They also sell vegan and gluten-free items.

But the question she gets asked most is, "When will you go on 'Cupcake Wars'?" the Food Channel program. "The answer is, when we get asked," she says.

Near-term plans include landing a second location to sell their wares -- just a storefront with countertops. They also want to increase their catering for events and add more deliveries.

Unlike some small-business startups, Little Pink Boxes didn't run into a lot of red tape. Part of it, Yniguez says, was because the oven and kitchen were already in place. And part of it was that she knew several of the city and county officials who needed to sign off. "Every one was as helpful as they could be," she says.

But she does believe a central clearinghouse or at least an itemized list of do's and don'ts would be extremely useful for budding entrepreneurs. There's no one place, she says, where a person can go and get even most of the answers.

Like other successful startups, Yniguez says a business plan is the first and most vital requirement. Other suggestions? "You cry. You get tired. You think you know but you don't. You've got to be ready to ask for help."

If Little Pink Boxes has a motto, it might well be: If you have a dollar, you can walk in and be happy.

Executive Editor Mike Tharp can be reached at (209) 385-2456 or mtharp@mercedsunstar.com.