Imagine earning a living doing something that you actually love to do!

As the founder of her very own business, Lara Adekoya doesn’t have to imagine, she’s living the dream. Fleurs et Sel is a baking company that was launched by Adekoya during the pandemic and combines her two favorite things — flowers and salt.

Adekoya spent most of her teenage years living in France, so Paris became a second home to her. With the French language holding a special place in her heart, it was only right that it influenced the name of her brand too.

Adekoya’s vision for Fleurs et Sel came from a hobby that she revisited during the height of the pandemic to keep her spirits lifted and bring back some of the joy she felt during her childhood.

“I wasn’t working the typical corporate job when the pandemic hit, I actually worked at Nordstrom and so when the stay-at-home orders kicked in, my day looked very different from my sister and boyfriend who spent a lot of their time on Zoom calls and meetings all day,” she shared in an exclusive interview with AfroTech. “I wasn’t doing that. Instead, I was in the kitchen because I love to cook and I love to bake and so I started baking cookies and banana bread and like all of my favorite treats that reminded me of [my] childhood because at the time I was kind of craving comfort.”

She didn’t just bake sweet treats for herself, Adekoya actually began to deliver treats to her friends just as a way to reconnect with them when the quarantine kept them apart.

“I was just kind of giving them out for free and eventually I came up with my business name because I thought, ‘oh this could be cool, this could be fun,'” she continued. “I didn’t really take it seriously at that point, because I was still giving out my treats for free and then some of my loyal Nordstrom customers reached out to reconnect with me because there was so much going on in the world last summer — specifically with the Black Lives Matter movement and the location that I worked at [which was] the Grove had been completely looted.”

Thanks to those check-ins Adekoya gained her first Fleurs et Sel customers. It was at this moment that she hit the ground running, curating a menu and providing an all-around experience for clientele who were rolling in to order her sweet treats.

Launching Fleurs et Sel not only brought her comfort and joy, but the 28-year-old also told AfroTech it taught her an important life lesson.

One important life lesson that all of this has taught me is that you have to be your biggest cheerleader. I say this because if I didn’t believe in my business, if I didn’t believe in the product, then who else would? I think that me being my biggest cheerleader has been a big part of the reason why I’ve been so successful.”

According to Good Morning America, Adekoya’s bakery business has even become a fan favorite among celebrities like Issa Rae, Lena Waithe and more.

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“What I’m doing is reaching beyond just the backyard,” Adekoya told Good Morning America. “It’s refreshing to have their support, because these are people that now know who I am, and they know that I make really great cookies.”

To get your hands on some Fleurs et Sel cookies, visit Adekoya’s website.

Pandemic Business

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