March 2025 Food & Beverage Grant Awarded to Flour and Salt Bakery LLC

We’re excited to announce the March $10,000 Business-Category: Food and Beverage Grant recipient. Congratulations to Britty O’Connor, owner of Flour and Salt Bakery LLC.

Recently, WomensNet Advisory Board member Marcia Layton Turner sat down with Britty for an exclusive interview. You can listen to their conversation and view the transcript below.

Video Transcript

Marcia: We are speaking today with the WomensNet March 2025 business-specific grant winner in the food and beverage category Britty O’Connor of Flour & Salt Bakery in Hamilton, New York. I’m Marcia Layton Turner, one of the WomensNet advisory board members. 

Britty, thanks very much for being here. 

Could you tell everyone a little bit about your company and where the idea came from?

Britty: I started Flour & Salt after I came to kind of a fork in the road. I was a middle and high school English teacher before and moved back to the town where my alma mater, Colgate, is in Hamilton, New York. I did not have any sort of secure job opportunity at the time and opening a business and running a café and bakery, specifically, had always been kind of a pipe dream. So, it felt like the right time, and it just so happened that someone offered me a space for rent during the same week that I got a job offer at a school. And I just decided to take the road less traveled in that case and went for it. And it’s worked out. I’m here 10 years later, still kicking.

Marcia: I know Hamilton, New York. It’s amazing that you’re an important business in that community. Very cool.

Is there a resource or two that you found especially helpful as you were starting or maybe growing your company, maybe a book or a podcast or an agency that you turned to?

Britty: Yes, one formal resource that we used was the Small Business Development Center here in New York State. They’re dedicated to all of the counties in New York. That was really indispensable when we were first starting. 

It’s a free resource and they sat down with us and helped us write our business plan and really understand what we anticipated for daily sales versus daily expenses. Had I not sat down and gotten that clear picture at the time, I think we wouldn’t have started off quite as timidly. 

The other is a little bit more of a boots-on-the-ground resource. I just spoke to everybody in my industry who was within, like, a 50-mile radius — people who were already doing this and doing it well. So, I would walk into their establishments and say, “Can I just walk around your kitchen and see what you’re using and ask you about your contacts for pest control and towel service?” and all the kinds of things that I might not anticipate needing starting out. That was really the most valuable thing for me to do.

Marcia: Very smart. I think entrepreneurs assume that other fellow entrepreneurs aren’t going to be willing to share info. You were really smart to ask.

Britty: Yeah. I’m only in the food service industry. I don’t have a lot of experience in other industries, but I find that everyone in this industry is really forthcoming and actually very excited to talk about how they’ve done things well, and also excited to help people avoid making the mistakes that they have made.

Marcia: Well, since we’re talking about marketing, let’s dig in a little bit deeper on that. Are there marketing strategies that you found super helpful? Or is there one that you would say don’t waste your money on? 

Britty: I would agree that word of mouth is important. And that’s hard for me to say because I love tech, and I love the ease of social media. But I’m also the chair of the Chamber of Commerce here and I’ve seen the real impact of business relationships — inter-business relationships but also customer behavior. 

Word of mouth is really powerful. Everyone’s going to eat all the time. They’re going to come and get a coffee and a bagel sandwich. But are they going to come back because they had a really good experience that wasn’t just service but rather hospitality? And now they’re going to tell all their friends that it was great too, right? 

Marcia: Good. Good. Well, before we wrap it up here, is there anything that the WomensNet community can do to support you? 

Britty: I think you’re doing a lot of it already. Just the fact that I’m here and having received this grant, I think it’s a huge impact. And this sort of advocacy with this interview, this is incredible promotion for us, too. 

And I can tell just by looking at the Amber Grant platform, like you guys invest in the grant recipients over time, it’s not a moment that exists in isolation. And then if anyone’s going to Colgate or living in Hamilton, just tell them to come to Flour & Salt.

Marcia: Will do. Thank you again for spending the time with me, sharing your story with the WomensNet community. And congratulations again on being our business-specific winner for March 2025.