King sold an 80% stake in Tate's to private equity in 2014
Kathleen King · Tate's Bake Shop: Kathleen King · Dec 16, 2019 · at 47:39
Kathleen King, founder of Tate's Bake Shop, discusses executing her exit strategy to retire at age 55.
0:00 / 0:11exact quote · 11.9s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“In the end we settled on Riverside and I ended up selling 80% of the company because I was really ready to retire.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Kathleen King
King viewed Mrs. Fields and David's Cookies as warm-only fads
“The cookies, you know, were thin and crisp and delicious, and they were different from Mrs. Fields and David's cookies, which was a nice concept, but more of a fad. You know, they were hot, Served off the tray type of cookies, and I always used to think, how c…”
In 2000, King was fired from her own bakery by her partners
“So I didn't go on my trip, and I waited, and one day I came to work, they were there, I walked into the office, and they handed me papers, saying that I was fired.”
A food product fails unless taste testers immediately return for another bite
“When I used to create new products at the bake shop, I used to watch my staff taste the product. If they taste it and they would be like, oh, this is good, and they walked away and didn't turn around and come back for another bite, I said it wasn't good enough…”
King says not trusting people is exhausting, preferring open-eyed trust
“I find not trusting people way too exhausting. And it's not the way I want to live my life, so I was very, very naive, and I used to trust blindly. Now I still trust everybody, but I trust with my eyes open.”
Tate's Bake Shop achieved annual revenue growth of 30% or more
“Tate's, you know, had like a 30% or more increase per year.”
King started her first bakery with $5,000 savings and a family loan
“Yeah, I had 5000 or so that I saved before I rented, and I had to borrow some money, and of course I couldn't get it from the bank, so my brother lent me a little bit of money because I had to buy My chocolate chips was 2000 dollars”