Young Bakers Learn about Business—and Caring

Kai and Anika Moses

In 2020, as one lockdown bled into the next, many people who were homebound with little to do began to look for hobbies to while away the endless hours. Some picked up knitting or the ukulele, and others turned to the kitchen for inspiration. Baking, in fact, became such a popular pastime that in March of 2020 the King Arthur Flour Co. saw a 2,000% increase in flour sales, according to Adweek.

Adults and kids alike were bitten by the baking bug. Instagram feeds abounded with sourdough and cinnamon rolls, and flour became harder to come by than toilet paper. For three Clintonville kids, baking was not only a pleasurable hobby, it launched two full-fledged businesses with a spirit of giving back at the core.

Thirteen-year-old Kaian (Kai) Moses has known for some time that he wanted to start a baking business, and the early days of the pandemic gave him the time he needed to do so. Many of his friends were making cakes and cupcakes and he wanted to find his own niche. “I woke up one morning and decided I wanted to make bagels,” he says. After some experimentation and YouTube research he landed on a recipe. “I tried it and it came out amazing!” gushes his 10-year-old sister Anika.

Together he and his sister came up with a business name, The Bread Box, and a logo drawn by Kai. A family friend helped them to design business cards and a social media presence. By October 2020, they were distributing professionally packaged Intro boxes to help spread the word. “We would give boxes to friends and family who would share with their friends and from there we’d start to get orders,” says Anika. “By January, we had gone through 130 pounds of flour!” They have since expanded their menu to include a broader array of goods, including gluten-free lemon bread and chocolate chip cookies.

Although the Moses siblings refer to The Bread Box as a business, it is more aptly described as a community service. Rather than sell their items, they ask for people to make a donation if they can. Sometimes the donations are cash, sometimes flour, sometimes nothing at all.

Bagels from The Bread Box

“The reason we decided to do donation-based is that we knew that a lot of people like baked goods, but not everyone has the money to give us for a set price. With donation-based, hopefully they don’t feel like they have to give us something in return,” explains Anika.

“For every order we receive, we use the donation to pay it forward,” says Kai. All donations are used to buy more ingredients, which they then turn into food donations. They’ve donated baked goods to neighborhood organizations including the Clintonville Resource Center, Clinton Elementary School for Teacher Appreciation Day, and most recently the critical care staff at Riverside Hospital.

COVID has made some things more difficult. All items need to be individually packaged. It is not unusual for Kai and Anika to be up early on a school morning, packaging up goods to be delivered for a winter senior breakfast or necessity bags at the CRC. “It’s a whole operation,” says Kai. “Anika is stapling a business card to the bag and I’m putting a sticker on it.”

The Moses siblings are not the only Clintonville kids with the vision to start a business while simultaneously doing good. Elijah Roher-Smith, 12, has always loved to experiment in the kitchen and had aspirations to start his own business prior to the pandemic. The original plan was to run the business with friends, but then COVID hit and gatherings became impossible. The business, Kids in the Kitchen, became a natural way to spend time and get involved in something. When asked about his original motivation, Elijah grins widely and says simply, “I was bored, and it was fun.”

As he talks, he busies himself doing what he loves most: carefully measuring out flour into a waiting bowl, the mixer whirring noisily over his words. Elijah’s menu is seasonal and often inspired by what’s growing in the large garden in his backyard. His zucchini bread in August shifts over to pumpkin bread come fall and he updates his customers on the current availability through his website and social media, precipitating floods of orders. Offerings in heavy rotation include vanilla and lemon-blueberry pound cakes, babka and brownies—which he’s made so many times he has memorized the recipe by heart.

(left) Elijah Roher-Smith; (right) Garden bread from Kids in the Kitchen

Akin to the Moses’ philosophy, it is important to Elijah that a portion of the proceeds from every item he sends out of the kitchen get donated to local charities including Children’s Hunger Alliance and the Charlie Brown Bird Rescue in Columbus. Food insecurity and environmental conservation are both issues that are close to his heart.

“When we lived in LA there were a lot of homeless people we would encounter and Elijah was always asking, ‘How can we help them?’” recalls Elijah’s dad, Ryan Smith. “He would insist that when we went to the grocery store and there were homeless people outside that we buy them a bag of oranges, or peanut butter and jelly. He would take the train with me sometimes to work and he always made sure we brought fruit to give to the homeless people we passed by.”

And why the Charlie Brown Bird Rescue? “I like animals,” Elijah says. “I don’t want to see them go extinct.”

For Elijah, as for Kai and Anika, it really is that simple. Caring matters and it’s important for them to give back wherever they can.

• You can find The Bread Box on Facebook at Thebreadbox614 and on Instagram at @thebreadbox614. Learn more about Kids in the Kitchen at its website.