Meet Mia Takhar | Entrepreneur

We had the good fortune of connecting with Mia Takhar and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Mia, what is the most important factor behind your success?
The most important factor behind the success of our brand is the relationships we build with others. When you have a business, it’s not just about the business or brand itself, it’s about building with community. The branding comes with ability to talk others, build relationships with partners along with selling your products. That is probably half the work.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Most of my career has been corporate. I come from a law/HR background, working for many government jobs throughout my 20’s. When I turned 29, I had this awakening of “what am I doing behind this computer, when I love baking”. This was a moment when I decided to quit, with a lot of fear, mind you. I had enough savings to keep me going for a few months. Business was new for me, therefore I didn’t know where to start. I started working with to a local company that made raw/vegan cakes and started to do farmers markets at first, that was not pleasant and thought, I am not doing this again. I then started to manage a restaurant called East is East in which I love! I always wanted to run a food truck, so I decided to open up a food truck with the owner of East is East who has also been very influential in my life. The fears I had were: would I be able to make money? How would I survive? But again, I had savings in order to do this and living at home, therefore I took up the opportunity to start my own business. Lessons: dont throw all your eggs in one basket. If you have a business idea, start small and work your way up slowly you don’t have to do it all now! I want the world to know that anything is possible! I know this is a overused word, but its true! Slowly and surely everything does come together.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
OK, so my cousin was just in town and we had the best time ever! I took her around my city of Vancouver. There are lot of little pockets/areas here. We spent a few hours driving around downtown, stanley park etc. We had a coffee at turks on the drive which is one of my favourite coffee shops, went over to gastown for a little bit of shopping, lunch at tacofino in gastown. Before dinner we went to the tiki bar was so fun with the different types of drinks they offer and although I do not drink they had options for me! Then over to East is East for dinner where we had the feast and caught some live music and finished over on the drive again at the charlatan bar for a drink and tea for me! We did a few hikes in North Vancouver. Jam cafe is a great breakfast joint in kits! She didn’t stay for a whole week, however, depending on the weather, a bike ride or rollerblade around the seawall is always fun. Harambe is an Ethiopian restaurant in which I love and JamJar is another great place for middle eastern food!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Aleph Eatery is a small business behind the scenes that carries all of my baked goods and the owner, Haitham, of this small business has always been of help! We talked about getting things started online for a while, we both have our own seperate businesses aside from the darling bakery and we were both eager to get this bakery out there with no fear and just did it! We both just thought it would be fun to do this new project together to see how it goes!

Website: https://www.darlingbakery.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/darlingbakery.yvr/?hl=en