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Fanny Lam had no more intention of opening a bakery than she did of becoming a lion tamer. But, of course, life circumstances have a way of diverting us down unexpected paths.
After moving with her husband from their native Hong Kong to Vancouver, a combination of boredom and an inability to find work in her chosen field (PR, marketing and movie distribution) led to a first-time exploration of baking, which then led to recipe blogging, a bestselling cookbook titled Oh Sweet Day!, and then, ultimately, a namesake bakery in East Vancouver. Despite opening mere months before the pandemic, Oh Sweet Day! flourished, so much so that a second location, in Port Moody, is currently under construction and slated to open in July or August.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
We always begin these interviews with the same question: “What’s your earliest memory of being taken to a restaurant?” Would it be more appropriate to ask what your earliest memory is of a bakery?
Either way works. My mom raised me and my brother as a single mom, so she had to go to work at a full-time job and we didn’t have a lot of money to go out to eat. But when there was a big event, like a birthday, she would take the day off and take both me and my brother to a very high-end hotel to have a dinner buffet. Now, when I say a buffet in an Asian hotel, it’s very different than anything in North America. The variety is different and the food is way fresher. The meat section isn’t just roast beef; there’s seafood, not just salmon. And the dessert table was crazy.
Which were the items you absolutely had to have on your plate?
I love seafood — crab, lobster, shrimp — but I don’t like fish. I’m also not a big meat person; I do eat meat, but I don’t necessarily need to eat it. And if we had a breakfast buffet — like, every time we would travel in Thailand, South Asia, the breakfast buffets at the resorts were amazing. So, I would have a lot of eggs. And then, at the very end, I would always save room for dessert. I love sweets.
Well, I would hope so! What about bakeries? I’m assuming Hong Kong bakeries when you were growing up were very different from those in North America.
Where I grew up, we had small, family-run bakeries that made Chinese pastry every morning, like pineapple buns, toasted coconut buns. I don’t think I was inspired or influenced by any of that, to be honest.
Did you not have any great affection for bakeries when you were younger?
Back then, no. I never knew I would [own a bakery for a living]. My first job was working at a radio station: PR, marketing. And I did a lot of event productions: concerts, music festivals, fashion shows, conferences. For a fresh graduate, it was so much fun. I got to see a lot of celebrities.
Did you seek out that kind of work or did it just fall in your lap?
My dream job was to be a journalist, but I didn’t have enough credit to get into [a journalism program], so I ended up studying translation. Before I joined the radio station, I was a court interpreter for three days. I just couldn’t stand it. The judge was an English speaker and the accused person was Vietnamese, and I was the interpreter between them both. It was very boring for me.
Why did you stop working in radio?
I didn’t stop. I met my husband when we were in high school in Hong Kong. He spent his first year of high school in Hong Kong before he moved [to Canada] with his family. He graduated here and then decided to move back to Hong Kong to start his career. That’s how we started dating. I think after 10 years, we decided to start our family.
You didn’t get married during those first 10 years?
No, no.
Are you married now?
Yes… So, we moved here. Technically, we both grew up in Hong Kong, but he also spent some time here as a kid, so he understood the difference between raising a kid in North America [as opposed to] Hong Kong, and we both agreed that this would be a better place to raise kids. That’s why we decided to move here together, to start our family.
Which year was that?
2005.
Oh, a long time ago! So, you published your cookbook before you opened Oh Sweet Day?
Yes. When I moved here, I’d spent over 10 years working in radio and movie distribution [in Hong Kong], so I thought with that amount of experience, it would be easy for me to find something here in Vancouver. But that wasn’t the case, because I didn’t know anyone. When it comes to PR and marketing, it’s all about networking, and I didn’t know anyone. I couldn’t find a decent job.
Do you consider yourself good at networking?
Back then, no. This place taught me to be better with human connection, relationships. Our first apartment was in Kerrisdale; we were renting. So, instead of working, I just spent my time getting to know the city, going to farmers’ market, getting all the ingredients and playing around with them at home.
You already knew you wanted to move into baking?
I didn’t know what I wanted to do. But going to farmers’ markets and Granville Island was really fun for me. And I just had so much time at home, and I like making pretty stuff, so I started cooking and baking. And when I was doing it, I went online to find a lot of recipes to help me. That’s how I discovered the blogging world, and I thought, “I could do that, too.” I created a blog and put my recipes on it. And then I got married, kids came along; the blog became about both cooking and parenting. And I think that’s how the blog started to connect with other parents, and it started to get a little popular. Then I joined Instagram in 2010. Back then, Instagram was really simple, not as calculated as nowadays. And because I’d been reading a lot of other blogs, that’s how I got my blogging skills in terms of writing and photography. That’s how my book publisher found me.
You didn’t have to get a literary agent? They came to you? That’s the dream!
Yeah, I was very lucky.
When you decided to take up baking, this was just for your own creative satisfaction? It wasn’t about being a good wife or parent?
No no no no no. (laughs) But when my kids came along, I started to enjoy baking for them.
Considering you had never really baked before, did you find that you had a natural talent for it?
I’m very precise, and if I want to do something, I’ll really, really spend time to make it work.
Initially, you were learning from other blogs or cookbooks, but once you established the science of baking, you could create things on your own?
Yes. And then friends and family started to ask me to bake for them, and I started to build up my home bakery. After a while, I started doing farmers’ markets.
What were you selling at the farmers’ markets?
Mini cheesecakes, because nobody else was doing it. By that time, I’d been to enough farmers’ market to see what was lacking.
And it was a hit from the beginning?
Yeah.
When the cookbook was published [in 2018], did you already know you were going to open a bakery?
No. I remember why it happened. We were driving our kids to Science World, and we saw this location [1706 E. 1st Ave., in East Vancouver] with a for-lease sign on it. And we [were like], “Ooh, wow!” We knew it used to be a bakery, so we decided, “Why don’t we just call and see how much the lease is?” My husband is a very good numbers guy; he’s good at anything I suck at. So, we did a little calculation and we figured it was worth a try.
When you saw that the space was available, was it the first time you had the thought that you would open a bakery, or had you already been thinking it was something you might want to do?
If I said yes, it would be a lie. My dream, at first, was to have a cookbook. And then, after that, my dream was to have a bakery, but I never expected it would happen. Doing farmers’ markets was hard enough. I wasn’t as much of a people person as I am now. When you’re younger, you really care about making yourself look good in front of other people. But now that I’m older, I don’t really care about that shit anymore. I just enjoy meeting people.
Was the bakery successful from the beginning?
One thing that really helped was it never relied on people sitting in. It was built to be grab-and-go. And we also worked with a delivery partner, so every part of that helped us to survive during COVID.
Has owning a bakery made you the sort of person who, if you travel to a different city or a different country, you want to check out the bakeries there?
Oh, totally. Always. For inspiration, for how can we make it work better. And for me, I really enjoy reading about other small-business owners’ backstories, to know how they deal with their team. Because for me, the welfare of the team is very important to running a small business, no matter how good your product is. If the team is not happy, they will not be happy selling to the customers. I invest a lot to make them happy. After a year and a half, the business was sustainable, and we were able to give them insurance.
What have been the most consistently popular items?
The mini cheesecakes, for sure. I didn’t expect the custom cakes to be this popular. I always want to make sure everybody can afford something, so we have a large menu on our website that’s more affordable, and the turnaround time is way less than normal for custom cakes.
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