The story of young pastry chef Roni who turned a hobby into her own business – Pidozra

At eight she made meringues; at 15 — her own master classes

Roni-Viel Hasin is an eighteen-year-old Ukrainian who has already devoted almost 10 years to her beloved craft and today runs her own business. She wrote a book, teaches people to make treats in master classes, and develops new desserts for cafes and restaurants.

Photo: from the heroine’s archive

As a child, Roni helped her mother and grandmother make simple treats like meringues or sponge cake, and from about age eight she started doing it herself. She cooked from recipes in books and magazines (in 2016 the culinary segment on YouTube and Instagram wasn’t yet so developed) by trial and error. “By eye, by intuition. Sometimes it didn’t work, and then it began to take shape. After two years I realized: this is what I want to develop in,” the girl says.

Around that time she also felt that age was a serious obstacle to doing business. Many studios that host master classes, for example, think that a 9–10-year-old child has no business at events. Now the hook of her own master classes is that people of any age can attend. “I fight the prejudice that a 10-year-old child can’t do anything: some at that age are incredibly talented and there’s a lot to learn from them,” says the pastry chef.

When the quarantine began in 2020, she started a pastry blog: she had dreamed since childhood of becoming popular and running a business. She didn’t yet know how to run social media or what marketing meant, but the desire to grow in pastry and show it to the world, she says, won out. At first she had 50–60 followers (mostly relatives and friends), but she didn’t notice how the audience grew and orders for treats began to come in.

And Roni took the next step: she began accepting orders for marshmallow, marshmallows, and mini-desserts. She practiced so much that when the large-scale war forced her to go to Israel briefly, she even created courses there on making meringue from scratch, revised her assortment according to market demand, and continued baking. She also took part in charity fairs in support of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. “I’m proud that at 14 I could make 450 portions of desserts in two days in a home kitchen,” Roni says.

In 15, returning home, the girl began holding master classes in Kyiv and creating desserts from her own recipes. This year she published a book, Sweet Steps to a Dream, where she shares thoughts on how to reach goals and life-hack secrets from her own experience. And, of course, recipes—original and family-adapted. “The first print run, 100 copies, almost sold out in a month,” the pastry chef says.

Photo: from the heroine’s archive

She needed a powerful mixer and limits on leisure time

Roni’s path to success wasn’t fairy-tale and required investment. The girl had to choose between her favorite activity, school, or a normal teenage life. In 9 grade she stopped taking orders: demand began to exceed physical capacity. “I had to choose either school or scaling up my capabilities. I chose to finish school, because I consider education super important,” she explains.

If you have a goal, you can find time for it, the girl is convinced. Roni sometimes had to give up walks with friends, zoning out on her phone, or watching a movie to carve out time for her work. “I knew it was for the sake of growing the business. And in the long term, giving up short-term pleasures will give me much more,” she explains.

Photo: from the heroine’s archive

At some point it became clear that it was time to legalize the beloved work: to register as a sole proprietor. Since about age twelve she understood, preparing to sell desserts, that this was a responsible matter, and consulted her parents on how to arrange the process so there would be enough time.

“My advice to all young entrepreneurs: so you don’t ruin your future career, consult a competent person, not necessarily a relative. You might not figure it out yourself,” says the entrepreneur. “My parents never did things for me, but were always nearby, supporting the most astonishing ideas.”

They also gave Roni a powerful mixer for making marshmallow for her twelfth birthday. The main equipment she needed at the start cost only hryvnias 500 (as the business developed she bought some things and received others as gifts). And most importantly—she immediately had to handle financial calculations. She did her first cost calculation simply in notes. She estimated when she would reach profit, but in the first years she reinvested almost everything in quality equipment, master classes, and courses. “The pastry field changes rapidly, and if at some point you decide you know everything, you’ll be left behind,” Roni explains.

To do calculations correctly, she followed dozens of other pastry chefs on Instagram, asked acquaintances, looked for information online, and figured things out herself. She didn’t immediately realize that cost should include depreciation of equipment and even the time spent communicating with the client and delivering orders. “I gradually improved; nothing came out perfect at once,” Roni says. “Orders didn’t come in like an avalanche right away—success comes from daily work.” You constantly have to develop your Instagram page and YouTube channel. And already in English, to expand the audience.

Photo: from the heroine’s archive

Plans: first education, then her own academy

Roni plans to develop the pastry field in Ukraine and globally. She wants to open a chain of pastry shops with a “very, very interesting concept, which I’ll keep secret for now so it won’t be copied.” And even more: she aspires to help other teenagers implement their ideas. To create a full-cycle pastry academy where people will be taught from scratch and graduate specialists who not only know recipes but also marketing, how to “sell” themselves, and how to set everything up legally.

Roni has a lot of advice for novice entrepreneurs and is ready to share it. First and foremost—take an advance payment. Once she made a huge set of marshmallow flowers and the client disappeared. She had to give the box away at cost (the family was tired of eating marshmallow), and the girl drew lessons from it.

Don’t believe everything you hear at professional lectures and conferences. Don’t agree to every partnership offer that comes in. For example, to make a cake in exchange for a shout-out on someone’s page. “If you’re just starting, or it’s the page of a favorite singer, then it’s acceptable. But don’t do it just like that, because you invest your energy, knowledge, and time, and that’s expensive,” says the young entrepreneur.

By 13 she realized that burnout can happen and you need to prevent it by finding balance. A teenager in the heat of things is ready to work 24/7, Roni says, but the body can’t stand it. You need to marry routine with work so you don’t derail from the path by twenty.

“Move gradually, in small steps, don’t think you’re smarter or older than you really are. If you don’t know—ask, but when you are belittled—don’t endure it,” advises the girl. She says she follows an important principle: remain an honest person and don’t act mean even in response. “Everything that could happen on the first day of selling my master class happened to me: they tried to take down the page, and adults (who I considered colleagues) organized a bot attack. But you mustn’t stoop to that level,” Roni insists.

Photo: from the heroine’s archive

Ahead of her is university study, which she considers a necessary foundation.

“I’ve met some of those so-called ‘successful’ people: usually their money was given to them, or it’s a loan, or it was earned in not very honest ways,” Roni says. “I’m against such easy profits: you’ll have to pay for them later.”

Registering as a sole proprietor is easy; understanding the responsibility is harder

Roni’s story is vivid. Not every teenager is so determined and in love with something from an early age. But if they want to develop in commerce and work “like an adult,” there’s a tool for that. Today among directions where 16–17-year-old sole proprietors can successfully work are IT services, digital freelancing, design, online education (tutoring), creating digital content, and other services that do not require licensing.

There is no official statistics in Ukraine on the distribution of underage sole proprietors by the fields they work in. But there are studies like “Index of the Future: professional expectations and adolescent development in Ukraine,” which show that IT, design, and creative industries are particularly attractive to teenagers. Before reaching adulthood they can program, do graphic design, video editing, translation and editing, photography, or sell their own products. The main thing is to direct activity into the correct legal channel and develop independence and an entrepreneurial streak in children.

In Ukraine a child can officially register as a sole proprietor as soon as they reach 16 years old. But—with the consent of parents or the guardianship authority, specialists at PrivatBank explain. Teenagers most often choose types of business that don’t require complicated processes or large capital investments.

“Ideally, this is a person who has already received vocational education and takes orders for their work officially: does installation or construction work, does manicures or haircuts, or works as a courier for a delivery service,” gives the example Yurii Yehorov, head of the coordination of AML procedures, compliance and financial monitoring at PrivatBank.

How to understand that a child’s activity requires official registration? When that work jumps the boundary of friends, family, neighbors, and acquaintances and reaches an external audience, it will require official payment for performed work or services. This idea should be reinforced both in school lessons on financial literacy and by entrepreneurial relatives’ examples, and overall by a culture of transparent entrepreneurship in society that still needs to be built.

Photo: provided by PrivatBank

Yurii Yehorov, head of the coordination of AML procedures, compliance and financial monitoring at PrivatBank.

“If money is coming into you, you need to make sure it happens ‘on the books.’ That must be an axiom,” Yurii Yehorov reflects. “Otherwise companies the teenager wants to cooperate with—those that work only officially—will explain it to them.”

Registering as a sole proprietor, after all, is not difficult. It can be done in minutes through the Diia app; through it you can also file an application to close it if the business doesn’t take off. However, if a sole proprietor has “leftovers,” you can’t get rid of them with one click: tax inspections will happen and fines and taxes may be assessed. “Even a minor sole proprietor is liable with their own property,” Yurii Yehorov warns.

So he says entrepreneurship is responsibility. Besides the beloved craft, it’s also filling out declarations, calculations, and so on. But modern banks have many offers that make running a sole proprietorship easier: online accounting, payment calendars, and automatic filling or calculation of payments.

Mother — advisor, guardian, but not an accountant

But the main advisor for a teen entrepreneur is their parents. They will have to explain from the very beginning everything about taxes, responsibility, and basic financial literacy. From day one of running a business you should understand the rules and the consequences that can arise if you do not follow legal norms and entrepreneurship rules.

Parents must make sure the child has a business plan. That they can explain what their business is, what legal actions and permits it requires, what investments are necessary and where to get them, and who will handle official accounting. They must prompt proper calculation of future expenses/investments and financial planning. Instill the habit of approaching impulsive decisions and unexpected offers cautiously and critically. Teach the child to check information about clients/contractors they work with. Explain common fraud schemes with real examples. And overall teach responsibility.

In this joint work it’s also necessary to keep a balance: teach the child to consult with parents, but also give them freedom to make business decisions. Parents’ desire to control every action of the child and make all business decisions instead of them is the most typical mistake. This excludes the child from business processes—they are an entrepreneur only nominally. Although, if set up correctly, early experience running a business can help the child in the future, even if the teenage business doesn’t become successful.

Photo: from the heroine’s archive

The main thing is to draw the right conclusions in the family about what caused the failure and not to blame the child for the setback.

Sometimes adults use children for other purposes. For example, splitting up a parents’ business. In practice parents register a sole proprietorship “in the child’s name” to optimize their own work and pay taxes at a reduced rate. In that case parents expose themselves and the child to the risk of fines, PrivatBank warns.

If children want to try their hand, parents’ support is required. If the goals are clear and convincing—why not? But parents need to follow the child’s business regularly: like they periodically check a school diary, they can also review an account statement, the expert explains.

“So it won’t be a shock to parents that crazy sums of money are ‘running’ through the account that the teenager has nothing to do with,” he says. That can happen if the sole proprietorship is actually fictitious and criminals bought it from the child for a few thousand hryvnias to use other people’s sole proprietorships to scatter, launder, and withdraw cash. These so-called drop schemes are often used by crypto exchanges; ‘fake’ sole proprietorships are also involved in drug trafficking, financing terrorism, and other illegal activities, the bank explains. “It may turn out that the statement simply shows ‘payment for goods and services,’ but in reality those goods are prohibited by law. Therefore it’s important to tell children that such schemes exist and that this type of side job is illegal and can have very bad consequences: from account blocking and fines to criminal liability,” Yehorov says.

Responsibility and vigilance, of course, are not only on parents. The bank where the sole proprietor’s account is opened also sees well what is happening and does not stand aside. When opening an account an approximate monthly incoming limit is indicated, and it’s clear that a courier physically can’t make more than a certain number of trips. And the earnings of a novice IT specialist are predictable and not sky-high. “And if the bank records suspicious operations, detects risks—it requests supporting documents, stops specific operations, terminates business relations. Failure to respond to the bank ends in refusal,” the head of the department explains. And in the future a damaged reputation will become a problem when there’s a need for, for example, loans, a mortgage, or other services.

Therefore, for a teenager’s first business to be truly successful, the bank advises approaching it responsibly, understanding what is lawful and what violates norms, and what liability may await those who use the account for “dark” affairs.

If you approach your first business responsibly, it can be a good start to an adult business career.