18-year-old Kildare baker gains a million followers sharing new business journey

TikTok fame comes in many forms, much of the outside perception is dominated by seeing some of the platform’s more popular members flexing their opulence or lip-syncing to a pop song to gain popularity.

However, there is far more than meets the eye and there is a diverse range of content available, which I suppose is to be expected on a social media platform that is one billion members strong.

Kildare town-based Alice Kelly gained overnight success when she shared her plans to convert a vintage horse box into a mobile bakery. She has been posting on TikTok under the moniker @FromScratchBaker.

Overnight success is typically a figure of speech but for 18-year-old Alice it was literal, with 100,000 followers being gained in roughly 12 hours

“It was scary honestly,” Alice said of the staggering jump in followers.

“I just wanted to share my journey. I thought it would be cool to show other people my age that you can do stuff like this. Especially girls, they wouldn’t expect someone their age to be welding and doing woodwork and it is very possible,” Alice said of her decision to begin posting.

Alice’s journey for her horsebox and baking project began back in April, around the time of her 18th birthday and two weeks before her Leaving Certificate. She was dead-set on her plans to further her baking skills in college but wanted to test the market with her own business.

“I wanted to have my own bakery without having to pay any insane prices to rent one out and I saw that my local coffee shop renovated a horse box during the pandemic and thought I want to do that too,” Alice recalled.

“It was from an elderly man somewhere in the midlands and I saw it on a second-hand website and I got it as an 18th birthday present from my parents.”

That horsebox is now central to Alice’s journey and social media posting, not just as the future host of tremendous baked goods, but the vintage box didn’t arrive in the Kelly household in pristine condition. A large portion of Alice’s endeavours in recent months have been the welding and woodworking jobs needed on the box to get it business ready.

“I didn't do anything like that (welding and woodworking) in school, it has been mainly just doing research and looking up how to do things. My dad works full-time and when he could early on he showed me some of how to work the machines I’d be using but other than those small bits it’s all been me trying to figure it out online,” Alice explained.

Alice’s rise in popularity has now seen her grow to over a million followers between TikTok and Instagram and that has come with both overwhelming support and naturally some resistance to her success.

“I choose to ignore it but there are plenty of those people saying I’m not smart enough or strong enough to be doing what I am doing. I get plenty of little sexist comments about having a man do the work for me,” Alice described.

“But pretty much all of the comments are lovely positive ones and about how great it is and saying they could never do that. I just want to tell them ‘no, you definitely can do it too’ but it’s all mainly positivity and it makes me feel good and that’s why I keep sharing the content.”

However, long before she became both a tradeswoman and a baker, she began her journey as a three-year-old helping her mother to bake. Inspired by her mother baking cupcakes for her father’s lunch box she began to join in and soon took over.

“I started baking when I was about three, I used to try and kick my mum out of the kitchen so I could bake on my own. I would ask my grandad to pull my mum out of the kitchen for a while so I could have the kitchen,” Alice laughed.

“Ever since then I have baked something at least once a week, even when I was on holidays.”
Alice’s mam has regained temporary control of her kitchen as Alice enjoys her new found love of renovation. That is until the business is officially up and running at least.

Alice is aiming for early September to finally bring her brilliant bakes on the road. But there are a few more obstacles before the FromScratchBaker is open for business.

“I’ve done bulk baking for family events so I’m not too nervous about the baking part, it’s more the selling part, I will be relying on my calculator for the maths,” she laughed.

“I have a house inspection at home coming up because I can’t obviously legally put an oven in the box. It’s basically someone from the HSE and checks that there is no chance for contamination with the food that is being made.”

Alice also prides herself on her re-imagining of recipes and putting her own twist on classic baked goods.
“The one I get the most compliments on is my millionaire shortbread because I make my own caramel. I am glad it’s that because it’s one of the ones that takes the most effort,” Alice said.

Alice’s innovations as well as future opening times and locations can be found on @thefromscratchbakery on Instagram and @fromscratchbaker on TikTok for more updates.