Just Desserts By Tamara Chapman
When
Rene Hosman (BSBA 2017) was 7, she and her best friend set up a backyard restaurant. They summoned their neighbors with a marketing flier, loaded some tables with condiments and offered their fare to the neighbors. “We only sold hot dogs and veggie dogs,” she recalled, but patrons scarfed up the frankfurters nonetheless. “That is probably my earliest and clearest memory,” the newly-minted Daniels alumna said. It was also a prophecy of sorts, foreshadowing Hosman’s pursuit of her own hospitality venture, the Little Bites Bakery. That enterprise—a gourmet baking/ catering company co-founded with Samantha Loose, another
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Californian in Denver for college— celebrated its first anniversary in May 2017, a month before Hosman graduated with a degree in hospitality management supported by minors in business analytics and entrepreneurship. The idea for the business grew out the duo’s fondness for baking, love of desserts and sense that, at least in Denver, sweets take a back seat to savories. “I think dessert sometimes gets left behind, and it’s my favorite part of the meal,” Hosman said. Although Hosman came to DU knowing she wanted to work in hospitality and sure she wanted to create her own culinary experiences for customers, she didn’t have a road map or timeline for getting there. But then she took a business law class
aimed at entrepreneurs. It convinced her she should and could start her own venture right away. With its cautionary content but clear outline for negotiating barriers, the course goosed her into action. “[The course] kind of scares you a little bit, but I walked out of there feeling I could really do something.” In late spring of her junior year she and Loose turned up the heat on their dream. They started applying for licenses, registering the enterprise with the appropriate government entities, filing away recipes and researching the availability of commercial kitchens. Keeping in mind the benefits of “asset-light” entrepreneurship, a concept she studied in her Daniels classes, Hosman didn’t want to invest more than she could afford to lose.