Latina-owned wholesaler Valedi Pastries and Bakery reflects its Latin American heritage through both its products and its customer base. Their recipes are inspired by traditional foods of Peru, like lucuma fruit and empanadas. They sell an ever-growing range of desserts and snacks to restaurants. They also cater special events like quinceañeras.
The business is a family operation, and they started it in their home kitchen. It was born in 2012 as a side gig for owner Wendy Yep and her mother. Following the regional custom of naming small businesses after relatives, Yep named the business after her daughter Valedi.
In 2016, Yep came to Centro SBDC to formalize her business. Advisor Claudia Shah explained licenses and permits, forming an LLC, and registering a trademark. In 2019, Shah helped her partner Raul Vallenas with posting on Yelp, Google, and Facebook. Fast-forward to 2020, when Covid forced restaurants to close and public events were canceled. Valedi lost a large portion of its revenue. They returned to the Centro for assistance applying for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan and forgiveness of the loan.
Now Yep and Vallenas are seeing their revenue return, and they are considering opening a retail space and expanding their team.
In their own words: “The SBDC has helped us a lot, giving us tons of information. We thank Claudia for always supporting us. We have attended so many classes with the SBDC that gave us the knowledge to develop our business and grow a little bit each day.”
