Raveena Oberoi is a familiar face in Surrey, where she runs , and now she's known for TV appearances too 鈥� quite a leap for someone who was once a shy teen who turned to baking as a way to cope with life.
The award-winning entrepreneur and pastry chef is a contestant on the latest season of , a Food Network show that streams on CityTV starting Monday, March 10.
Pre-pandemic, Oberoi's time on TV started with a Halloween-themed episode of The Big Bake in 2019, followed by work as a judge on Prime Video's Wall of Bakers in 2022.
This time, she flew to L.A. to bake on the Jesse Palmer-hosted Spring Baking Championship, as the only competitor from B.C.
"I didn't know how I was going to leave the (Just Cakes) business for that long, but we made it work," Oberoi said. "I thought it was a great opportunity, and I'm super happy that I did it."
With filming wrapped and Oberoi silenced, people will have to tune in to see how she fared among 13 competitive bakers in the show's whimsical Little Shop of Spring Magic.
Years ago, Oberoi got into the baking business while still in high school, then studied at UBC, travelled to Paris to learn the art of pastry and opened Just Cakes in Newton.
"It'll be eight years in July on Scott Road (at 75A Avenue), it's been great," she said. "I'm from Abbotsford, so I was doing this from home, right, and literally every other day I would find myself in Surrey because a lot of my customers were in Surrey, so I considered Surrey my first choice because of all of the weddings and banquet halls were that way."
The experience of opening the bakery wasn't always sweet.
"The space had to be gutted but we got a good rate and did a lot of improvements," Oberoi recalled. "We did the work, took out a loan. The banks didn't really trust me but took a chance, for sure, and slowly, slowly built the kitchen and did the best I could with what we had. It started with two tables, just crazy, and we added another table, a mixer, all this stuff, and it took a few years to slowly build it up."
Cakes are baked in Newton and also a kitchen/warehouse space in Cloverdale, where Oberoi recently hosted a cake-tasting event for potential clients.
Right now she's also focused on making and selling Gummy Gainz, a protein candy she created in partnership with Ben Poss and Mark Motozono.
Oberoi talks passionately about how the business venture got off the ground.
"Mark and Ben, it was kind of their brainchild," she explained. "Ben is an amazing trainer, doing that for 20-plus years, and Mark is kind of a serial entrepreneur who's been in the manufacturing space, and he likes candy, sweets.
"That's where the idea was formed that like, hey, a protein gummy would be awesome. They did some research, saw that nothing really existed, so they wanted to come up with something. That's when the found me through the grapevine and asked me to help work on a recipe. So I did and presented it to them, and they liked it so much that they asked me to be a partner with them."
A challenge was mass-producing the gummies without sacrificing quality, and by last October everything was in place for distribution.
"Gummy Gainz are in IGA and Fresh Street stores, and now we're rolling out at Save-on-Foods and Urban Fares across B.C. and hopefully Alberta, so that's really exciting, and we've seen a lot of success on Amazon as well," Oberoi added.
"I think it's the whole notion that protein is important for everyone, not just people who are, you know, more active or athletic. It's real candy and it's easy protein 鈥� that's our tagline because we're not trying to be another sugar-free candy, we're not trying to be, you know, a health food product, but we are trying to be a better-for-you product, a functional product that can actually be in your day-to-day life that you can feel good about eating."
The venture seems to be another success story for Oberoi.
"Having a hand in that recipe was special to me because it was something out of my comfort zone, but it was something that we were able to kind of create, and now just seeing the momentum is pretty cool."
