Lydia Jacobs Stagner was about 6 years old at the time and wanted to find a way to make treats that were easy for her dog to digest.
The Starkville native came up with the peanut butter and oat treat.
Now, at age 12, making dog treats has turned into a love of baking and cooking.
And that love led to an entrepreneurial spirit that now leads him to taking orders for baked goods and starting a budding vending machine business.
Just over the recent Easter holiday, Lydia, a self-taught baker, had an amazing list of orders, including cheesecake, pound cake, German chocolate cake and birthday cake.
“Just look at the recipe and follow the recipe,” she said. “And I had taken cooking classes in the past. And I made a simple bread recipe (no need to ferment yeast). Then my mom suggested I take the order and People have suggested making different things and I’ve done it. Now I’ve made cheesecakes, cakes, cupcakes, and even baked goods like croissants. ”
What does she like to make the most? “I like making bars, magical cookie bars, but I really like making cheesecake,” she said. “The magic bar consists of graham crackers, aged nuts, chocolate chips, and coconut, topped with sweetened condensed milk. Then we pop it in the oven.”
She also bakes a mean double chocolate loaf. “As soon as I took it out of the oven, it smelled so good. My mom loves it!”
Lydia’s MiniBakery has granola, French toast cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and delicious breads. They also accept orders for chocolate cake and other items.
Not to mention, she sometimes cooks dinner for her family. her mother (Erin), father (Randy), two sisters (Maggie and Abby), two Great Danes (Zeus and George), and one cat (Terry). Stir-frying garlic-lime chicken and rice in the slow cooker or making her favorite buffalo chicken taquitos just doesn’t cut it for her.
Dinner is prepared at home, but Lydia provides snacks through her vending machine business located at Mississippi Delta Community College’s Greenwood Center on the Delta Streets Academy campus. She keeps things stocked with chips, chocolate and other candies, granola bars, and more.
“She saved money from babysitting and bought a vending machine last August,” said her mother, Erin.
Erin is proud that her daughter is learning business so early. “She’s my retirement fund,” she joked.
She credits homeschooling with giving Lydia the time and space to start a small business. “She’s given the freedom to do things like that. She gets to learn how to run a business, overhead and all that good stuff,” Erin said.
Delta Street School Principal and Executive Director T. Mack Howard offered Lydia a business opportunity.
“This is part of our work on Delta Street to educate young people and help them learn business skills,” he said. “She’s learning the hard way of life having to order products. Knowing when to order, knowing when orders go wrong, ordering at the right time, and being a student at Delta Street and at MDCC.” It’s about delivering that to all the customers who are students. They might get upset (if they don’t have their tastes aligned). So this is how life will be when she gets older. It’s a great little microcosm of what could become.”
Lydia programs and maintains the machine herself.
Howard said Lydia surveyed students about what they wanted from a vending machine. “What you and I eat may not be much for a 14-year-old boy. The boys came back with what they wanted.”
Emily Shafer, an assistant at Erin’s chiropractic office, calls herself a “very regular customer” of Lydia’s Baking.
“I’ve tried them all,” she said, stuffing herself with Lydia’s French toast cookies. “I’m a taste tester. I prefer bread and cookies. I like her both sweet and savory. Her savory breads are amazing. I like lemon. I like her lemon. What she does with it is really sour, which I love. And she has a way with dark chocolate too. She does a great job of making cosmic brownie imitations. But it’s the best one ever, better than Little Debbie’s.”
If cooking for her family and running a small business aren’t enough, Lydia also takes part in acting at Greenwood Little Theater, including roles in two past productions, and Taekwondo and piano lessons. I am also involved.
Lydia has vast experience in the kitchen, but she’s still not sure if she wants to use her culinary skills to build a career.
In the meantime, she’s baking for her growing number of customers and enjoying dinner for her family.
– This article first appeared in Leflore Illustrated, a quarterly magazine published by Greenwood Commonwealth.
