Australia’s Queen of Chocolate shares advice on growing a business while staying true to your craft.

Whether Kirsten Tibballs is layering a mojito trifle or creating coffee and chocolate caviar, there’s mastery in every move. The Masterchef regular is the crème de la crème of food artisans:  an internationally-renowned pastry chef and chocolatier, a cookbook author, TV host and brand ambassador. 

But in the decades she’s spent busy building acclaim for her art, Tibballs has also built a business, Savour Chocolate and Patisserie School, catering to more than 60,000 students. Business ownership takes many tradespeople away from the tools, but Tibballs has found a sweet spot – crafting a model that allows her to hone her technical skills and run her SME at the same time.

Having Your Cake And Eating It Too In A Small Business

Tibballs started selling decorated cakes as a child but didn’t consider she had an entrepreneurial streak. She started a pastry apprenticeship as a teen, travelled and worked overseas, and would likely have continued as a chef had a conversation not changed her career trajectory. 

“Someone came to me and asked me to start a business to help promote their business,” she recalls. “They said I will sponsor your school with the ingredients I sell. I hadn’t considered opening a school. It wasn’t on my radar.” But on reflection she noticed a gap in the market; that it was difficult, pre-social media, for Australian pastry chefs to keep up with overseas trends Savour opened in 2002, describing itself as the first school of its kind in the world to cater to both amateur enthusiasts and professionals.  “I can’t imagine doing anything else now,” Tibballs says. 

Although she embraced the challenge, Tibballs was wary of wearing multiple hats, since she knew she would need to constantly improve and refine her skill set. “I felt that going into a business sometimes hinders you from growing as a professional,” she explains, “because you’re working on the day-to-day running of the business. So, how do you then continue to evolve and become better?”

Tibballs settled on a business model that would solve that problem. Teaching meant she could practise technique, without the time and energy burden of a production-based business, like a patisserie. Her husband, a business adviser, offered informal support but the success of the model relied on having the right people in place to manage the day-to-day operation. 

“Your business is only as good as the people that are employed by you,” she says. She warns owners of fledgling businesses to hold off hiring for as long as possible, given the time and cost involved in managing staff. “If you can nail down people management – getting the best out of your staff and ensuring satisfaction, I think that’s key to a successful business.”

You Don’t Have To Sacrifice Quality To Grow

Success for any small business often leads to talk of scale. Popular book The E-Myth Revisited suggests SMEs built around one ‘technician’ often fail because they can’t grow without them. But there are many examples to the contrary, in which revolving a business around a central character is regarded as a superpower. Kirsten Tibballs falls into this camp at Savour. “I’m really hands-on,” she says proudly. “I teach all the classes, actually. And I film all the online classes.” 

She sees her involvement as a selling point rather than a liability because it guarantees continuity and ensures quality control. She can have total confidence in the calibre of instruction every student receives, because they’re learning from her. There is, however, one thing Tibballs can’t do: be in two places at once. She recalls having to make a crucial decision as demand for classes grew. “I didn’t want to grow the business to another facility,” she explains. “When you’re doing the type of thing that I do, I think I would have lost continuity.”

Her solution proved to be visionary. “The only way I could see my way around that was to do an online model where people from around the world could access the classes anytime they wanted to.” When the pandemic hit, she’d been offering online classes for 7 years, so no emergency pivot was required.  “We ran classes seven days a week, so people could probably do a month worth of training without repeating a class. And that worked really well.” 

When Personal Growth Doubles As Professional Development 

Being so closely aligned with her school means personal development doubles as professional development: “I work on myself as much as I work on the business,” Tibballs says.

That includes pursuing recognition that will be reflected onto Savour. “I represented Australia in the (Pastry) Olympics in Germany and got a gold medal,” she says, reflecting on an achievement that required 40 hours a week of training over two years. In the same year, 2004, her handmade chocolates were declared best in the world at the World Pastry Championships in Las Vegas.” In 2022, she was appointed Head of the Jury for Taste at the World Chocolate Masters in Paris. She has written three cookbooks and is an ambassador for premium Belgian chocolate brand Callebaut.

“I’m constantly pushing myself, which is almost a separate business as well as Savour,” she explains, “but what I do externally also promotes Savour, if that makes sense.”

Tibballs also recommends taking advantage of SME agility to test ideas. The move to online classes and retail offerings, and a VIP membership, were the result of quiet contemplation sessions.

(Caption) Trio of chocolate ‘fruits’ from 2017 Masterchef Grand Finale

Reach The Top Of Your Field And Try To Stand Out

Regardless of the industry, Tibballs says every small business should pursue excellence: “You have to be the pinnacle in the field.”

To reach the top, businesses must find ways to stand out. “You have to have something that’s engaging,” she says. “You can’t just say, ‘Yeah, we make cinnamon scrolls.’ There has to be a bit of a story. Why would I come in? What makes your cinnamon scroll better than anyone else’s?”

She cites the example of famed Melbourne croissanterie Lune, where former Formula 1 aerodynamicist Kate Reid built a cult around croissants through her own obsession with quality and excellence. Her meticulous baking process meant production was limited and the resulting scarcity created FOMO (fear of missing out) and buzz. “Because the line’s always there outside the shop,” Kirsten says, “when people actually secure a product, they’re so happy they post about it. That sort of promotion works well in today’s society.”

Tibballs is a firm believer in harnessing social media to build demand and brands. She consistently posts high-quality videos of exquisite desserts to 760,000 personal Instagram followers, 269,000 for Savour and 20,000 for her TV show, The Chocolate Queen. She advises business owners to invest in a phone with a decent camera, find the platform that best suits their audience and meet them there. 

“It’s no longer ‘I make this great product and I’ll put it in my shop and it will sell,’ Unfortunately, that doesn’t work anymore.” She also acknowledges the power of influencers, citing the example of Dubai Chocolate, which sprang from TikTok to become a global phenomenon. SMEs that can’t afford yet paid partnerships can start with gifts. “If you’re happy to back your product and you think it’s great, there should be no fear in sending it out to people and asking for an honest review.”

One of Tibballs’s proudest achievements is knowing her business has spawned hundreds of others – chocolatiers and pastry chefs who’ve launched their own operations with skills developed or refined in her school. Among her alumni are artisans behind Coco88 in Sydney and Torode Xocolatl in Melbourne, while one popped up recently in New York State. “It makes me very proud to think that I’ve contributed in some way to people fulfilling their dream.”