Instead of hanging out with friends or watching TV, senior Noah Rose spends his Sunday afternoon completing orders for his business, Soul Bakery.

Operated from his house, Rose started Soul Bakery seven months ago, in May. He has since then been adding new recipes and products to his menu, recently adding a Christmas cookie bundle. Though he does profit from his love for baking, it is not the sole reason he pursued this business.

“I think the reactions, it’s not even like the process itself, but just like watching people,” Rose said. “Watching their eyes get big and just knowing that I did that.”

Rose’s passion for baking started at a young age and his family, especially his mom, has supported him through his endeavors.

“She’d show up and bring cakes and I’d watch her make it,” Rose said. “And so when you grow up watching everyone around you do it, you want to do it as well.”

It didn’t take long for his parents to realize that Rose needed to share his passion and talent with the community.

“He would always cook, I have pictures of him at three years old making these cookies and just baking cakes,” Noah’s mom, Felecia Rose said. “And then we just let him get in the kitchen, we bought him everything he needed and he just started practicing and we’re like sell these.”

Though his business is only seven months old, the idea has been in Rose’s head for a long time. 

“I had built up the confidence, I guess you could say it to want to push it out there and let other people try it,” Rose said. “But I’d just built up the courage to do it recently.”

Rose’s business has been quickly growing and he has been thankful for his community and the support they provide. He focuses his brand around the people that support him by dedicating bundles under customers’ names and posting about them on his Instagram @officialsoulbakery.

“When I did that, that became the center of my community, the center of the brand,” Rose said. “When you think of Soul Bakery, you think, hey, look at all these people and look at the community.”

Rose focuses on providing for his customers, his focus isn’t how he can profit from an interaction, but instead how he can make the experience valuable for the customer.

“I’m very flexible,” Rose said. “Prices are never my concern. I just want you to try the cookie. If you like it, you like it.”

This personality and love for the community is what has drawn customers to return to Soul Bakery.

“You can definitely see the drive he has for this and the effort that he puts into it and the love that he puts into it,” senior Kari Arder said. “It reminds me of my aunt’s cookies.”

Making sure to get feedback from his family and friends, spends all the time necessary to perfect his recipes in order to ensure he is providing a quality product and it is truly something people would love.

“It really depends if it’s something simple like a chocolate chip cookie with M&M in it, it doesn’t really take much,” Rose said. “But, the new pumpkin spice cookie I made took a very, very long time because there are all these fall and autumn seasonings and spices that I wanted in it and I just had to figure out a good balance.”

As his business grows and more recipes are added, Rose looks ahead to the future and hopes of how he could expand.

“I would love at some point if I do branch this out to get an industrialized kitchen and get everything to where it is done seconds,” Rose said. “But I always want everything to make sure it’s cooked. If it’s not cooked, I’m not serving it.”

With the success of his business, others who also have similar aspirations look to Rose as a guide for their endeavors hoping to achieve the same accomplishments he has. This has led to Roses start-up dedicated to helping others work through their own process.

“I got an email from this girl, just a grade under me too, asking me to mentor her and become her mentor, so I really made that for her more than anything,” Rose said. “I don’t know what I’ll do with that moving forward, because I want to focus on my own, but I still have that there, and that can be a side project that I do or something in the future.”

Rose wants to make the same impact on others as his family did on him. With his entire family baking, it was clear that he had the talents to pursue his passion.

“He’s surpassed me in every area,” Felecia said. “And to be honest with you, he’s surpassed a lot of the elders in our family. I mean, it’s just incredible.”

The motivation Rose has and continues to maintain assures customers that they are receiving a product that was made through hard work and dedication.

“We have a saying in our culture ‘you put your feet in that,’” Felecia said. “So that’s what we say. Oh my gosh, Noah you put your feet in that.”

Rose truly puts his soul into his business and he doesn’t pay attention to his profit, but instead how his passion can be shared with others. His parents were big advocates for starting this business and didn’t want him to work under someone else.

“I ultimately realized now that there’s so much beauty in working for yourself than working for someone else,” Rose said. “They were like, make your own money, do something for you. That was just an awesome lesson that it took me so long to realize. But I get it now.”