Lydia Jacobs-Stagner was about 6 years old at the time when she wanted to find a way to make doggie treats that would be easier for her dog to digest.
The Starkville-born girl came up with some peanut butter and oats treats that did the trick.
Now at 12 years old, the making of doggie treats morphed into her love for baking and cooking.
And that love has also cooked up an entrepreneurial spirit that has now led to her taking baked goods orders and a budding vending machine business.
Just the past Easter holiday, Lydia, a self-taught baker, had an impressive list of orders: cheesecake, pound cake, and German chocolate and birthday cakes.
“I just look at the recipes and follow the recipes,” she said. “And I have taken a class for cooking in the past. And I’ve done quick bread recipes (which don’t require yeast to rise). Then my mom proposed to take orders, and people would suggest different things to make, and I did that. Now I do cheesecakes, cakes, and cupcakes and strawberry pies. I’ve done pastries, like croissants. Everything.”
One of her favorite things to make? “I like making bars — magic cookie bars, but I really like making cheesecakes,” she said. “The magic bars consist of graham crackers, lay-down nuts, chocolate chips, coconut, and put sweetened condensed milk on top. I then stick it in the oven.”
She also bakes a mean double chocolate bread. “As soon as it’s out of the oven, it smells really good. My mom loves it!”
Lydia’s MiniBakery is stocked with granola, French toast cookies, chocolate chip cookies and savory breads. She also takes orders for items such as chocolate cake.
Not to mention, she also cooks dinner from time to time for the household: Mom (Erin), Dad (Randy), two sisters (Maggie and Abbie), two Great Danes (Zeus and George) and a cat (Terry). It’s nothing for her to whip up garlic lime chicken and rice in the slow cooker or make one of her favorites: buffalo chicken taquitos.
Dinner at home is taken care of, but Lydia provides snacks through her vending machine business that’s located at Mississippi Delta Community College’s Greenwood Center on the campus of Delta Streets Academy. She keeps it stocked with chips, chocolate and other candy, granola bars and more.
For her vending machine on the campus of Delta Streets Academy, Lydia did a poll with the students to see what kind of snacks they wanted stocked in the vending machine. (By Johnny Jennings, Copyright 2024 Emmerich Newspapers, Inc.)
“She saved her money from babysitting and bought a vending machine last August,” said her mother, Erin.
Erin is proud that her daughter is learning business at such an early age. “She’s my retirement fund,” she jokingly said.
She credits homeschooling with providing Lydia the time and space for a small business. “She gets the freedom to do those kinds of things. She gets to learn how to run a business, overhead and all those good things,” Erin said.
T. Mac Howard, the head of school and executive director at Delta Streets, gave Lydia the business opportunity.
“That’s part of what we do at Delta Streets in equipping young people and helping her learn that skill of business,” he said. “She’s learning the life of hard knocks in having to order stuff, knowing when to order, knowing when it doesn’t work out, ordering it at the right time and getting it to all her customers, who are Delta Street boys and MDCC students. They might be upset (if not stocked with their preference). So, it’s a great little microcosm what life is going to look like when she gets older.”
Lydia programs and maintains the machine herself.
Howard said Lydia did a poll with the students to see what they would want in the vending machine. “What you and I might eat may not be quite so 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 everything,” she said while munching on Lydia’s French toast cookies. “I’m a taste tester. I prefer breads and cookies. I like both her sweet and savory things. Her savory loaves are amazing. I like lemons. The things she does with the lemons are really tart, and I love them. And she has a way with dark chocolate as well. They’re tasty. She does a good cosmic brownies knock-off that are the best things ever — better than Little Debbie’s.”
If cooking for the family and running her small business aren’t enough, Lydia is also involved in acting with Greenwood Little Theatre, including roles in the last two productions, taekwondo and piano lessons.
Though she’s getting a vast amount of experience in the kitchen, Lydia isn’t quite sure just yet if she wants to make a career out of her culinary skills.
In the meantime, she enjoys making baked goods for her growing clientele and dinner for her family.
- This article first appeared in Leflore Illustrated, a quarterly magazine published by The Greenwood Commonwealth.
