Xero Roadshow Small Business Profiles: Table Talk & Mint Cakery

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We’re travelling the country through 16 locations across both islands, from Whangarei to Invercargill for Xero NZ Roadshows!

We’re showcasing some of our wonderful partners and small businesses in the centres we pass through. You can check out more of them on the blog, and info about the roadshow on our website. Here’s a bit about Michelle Bevan and Darren Jarrett, who own Table Talk & Mint Cakery.

Tell us a bit about your journey

We first started out a couple years ago with a cake shop in Point Chevalier called Mint Cakery. It was really small, just 20sqm, run by just us two. We were 23, super naive and new to everything, and it was quite a low risk taking the lease on.

Ten months later, we opened up another bakery in Remuera called Table Talk. It was super busy – and still is, it’s insane. It was much bigger but it was still low risk because we had a flat above it, so we were living there too which made it much simpler to run the business. The biggest thing it added was the logistics of having two shops and hiring staff in order to run both.

Then two months ago, we opened up an Ellerslie store. Now we’ve got three shops and about 15 staff. We’ve grown really quickly; when we opened 18 months ago we had two staff. And in May this year we only had about five staff. In the past couple of months our business has kind-of next-levelled which has brought another world of challenges with it too.

Have you found Xero has helped you with those challenges?

It has definitely helped us heaps, especially with our financial challenges. You can actually see what’s going on in your business. I just don’t know how anyone operates without it.

I love being able to track our cash flow, and seeing where we’re spending, and why we’re spending it. And then being able to see if there’s anything that needs to be changed.

My favourite thing is Xero Expenses. When you buy something in a shop, and you take a photo of the receipt and it just automatically integrates into the right transaction. You don’t have to keep track of the finer details as Xero does it all for you. It’s probably the most handy feature.

How did you first learn about Xero?

We’ve always known about Xero and we started using it straight away. To be honest I can’t pinpoint how we heard about it, but it was definitely a company we were going to use from day one.

At first we weren’t going to use it with an accountant, but then we decided for peace of mind we’d get someone who does our GST – and that’s basically just double checking what Xero does anyways.

Xero is great because we can pinpoint exactly where we’re spending and what we’re spending in each store and then we can figure out how they’re all doing – both collectively and separately.

We’re focused on creating beautiful moments in your business journey. How has Xero given back to you so that you can have those beautiful moments?

Xero has given us a lot of awareness around our business. But I think that’s a difficult question for us to answer, because having started using it from day dot we don’t know any different. We’re Xero lovers though.

I couldn’t imagine trying to finalise or organise our accounts in any other way – Xero makes the process very easy and streamlined. I would say it’s probably given me less wrinkles from not being as stressed about little things like the GST bill every three months – just cause we can see it all in the software. Which is ideal.

If you could give a piece of advice to someone considering starting their own business, what would it be?

Firstly, sign up to Xero. And secondly take the risk and don’t overthink it. Just do it. What do you have to lose? Just go and do it. Otherwise you’ll never know what could have happened.

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