She invested BRL 100 to make truffles at house and as we speak she has an organization that earns BRL 3 million

Luciana Machado owns Ateliê Lu Chocolates. She started making chocolates at home to earn extra income and today she attends large events and sells directly to the final consumer.

Evening program viewer cookingLuciana Machado, now 44 years old, used her hobby to undertake in 2004. At the time, she had a two-year-old son and needed a extra income to help with household bills. Also, active since the age of 14, she wanted to go back to work. Machado remembers that she invested just over R$100 to make the first truffles. Today, she owns the Atelier Lu Chocolateswhich earned BRL 3 million in 2021.

Machado’s husband worked at a company in Mauá (SP), where the family lives. Over the years, she specialized in courses, improving the revenue of chocolates, looking for new inspirations and selling door to door to acquaintances. During this period, she began to take orders, organize some events, such as bingo Easter eggsin addition to other activities that helped engage the business in the region.

The big turning point occurred in 2015, when Machado’s husband lost his job🇧🇷 Until then, she had acted as Individual Microentrepreneur (MEI)🇧🇷 The couple decided to focus on the artisanal chocolate business, which showed potential for growth. The entrepreneur changed the regularization to the Simple nationaland her husband started helping her with the management and financial part of the business.

Already better known in the region, and with a total focus on sweets, Machado began to grow and hire people to help her. In a short time, they moved to a small house in Santo André, also in Greater São Paulo, to increase production. “In 2019, the space is already too small, and we need to move to a bigger place”, she says.

At that stage, Ateliê Lu Chocolates was focused on events, such as weddings and birthday parties, and large orders. In 2020, with the pandemic, the entrepreneur needed to rethink the business. “I already wanted to sell retail, directly to the consumer, but I wasn’t prepared. There I had to go one way or another.” With sales via delivery, e-commerce and a factory store, she managed not only to maintain the business, but also to grow 30%.

“We had good growth until the beginning of this year. Then it stabilized, and the events started to return”, she says. She says that she took advantage of the moment to “clean up the house”, looking for guidance on entrepreneurshipand adjusting the technical data of the products, with the hiring of a nutritionist🇧🇷 Although events have returned, the store still maintains significant month-on-month growth.

Today, the company has 31 employees and bills around R$ 370,000 per month. The expectation for this year is to close with an amount about 20% higher than last year. For the future, the entrepreneur has been studying the possibility of opening a coffee shop, where she will be able to combine the drink with her products, and feed the Hotmart platform with recipe videos, in partnership with friends, customers and artists – yes, very similar to those programs in which she herself was inspired.

Source: PEGN Magazine