Wild Rye is a new kind of baking company — designed for today’s varied styles and occasions of social interaction. It offers cake, frosting and pancake mixes for the gluten-free, plant-based and gluten lovers alike. “We are all about quality, ease, connection and good times,” says founder and chief baking officer Sarah Chisholm.
A professional pastry chef, she says, “I recognized that I could help people make, in their homes, the type of goodies we’ve come to expect only from a bakery or restaurant. Removing the misconception that baking is challenging, I could reach my friends who would never call themselves bakers and empower them to experience the magic of baking with their favorite people. And I could do it while being inclusive and cognizant of all the different ways we choose to eat, live, love and celebrate today.”
Chisholm founded Wild Rye Baking Co. in 2020 and ran right into COVID-19 and supply chain disruptions. Her response to such challenges as scrapping packaging designs and starting from scratch, and sourcing specific ingredients like vanilla from Madagascar while shipping containers are unable to dock — and having to rework timelines multiple time — was to keep her “why” in mind and look at every challenge as an opportunity. “In the end,” she shares, “Wild Rye became more local, more connected to our community and way more resilient because of these setbacks.” She launched the company in November 2021.
Taking to heart the advice, “Stop expecting it to look like what you thought it was going to look like,” Chisholm says, “When I realized that my company wasn’t going to look like anything else and I stopped expecting it to look like the successful businesses I had seen and heard about, that’s when I was really able to bring Wild Rye to life. What we launched with is an authentic representation of my baking, entertaining, living and giving ethos. It looks a lot different than I expected, but it feels great!”
