‘It’s like living a dream’ — laid-off Strip worker turns keto baking into business

Red velvet cupcakes, custom-made cakes and almond joyousness bombs capable the bakery’s show case. Each 1 is made with Jill Shlesinger’s passionateness — and without sweetener oregon gluten.

The treats are each sold astatine Starburst Parlor, a caller keto-friendly bakery that opened past week successful Las Vegas.

The thought came to the proprietor and baker aft years of baking and a layoff during the COVID-19 pandemic. Shlesinger said she had worked arsenic a wide manager successful a operation cafe-cocktail barroom connected the Strip for much than 10 years but was abruptly laid disconnected erstwhile the concern was sold successful 2020.

Shlesinger began feverishly baking erstwhile the metropolis closed down the Strip to fulfill her ain cravings for thing sweet, she said. She sticks to a keto, oregon low-carb, fare to assistance dainty her polycystic ovarian syndrome and noticed that galore sugar-free oregon gluten-free products sensation similar macromolecule pulverization and outgo “like $60.”

Once she was laid off, friends encouraged her to crook her pandemic hobby into a business. She and her spouse began selling the baked goods portion putting unneurotic the brick-and-mortar determination astatine 2202 W. Charleston Blvd.

Shlesinger said it was passionateness and grit that enactment the bakery together. She and her spouse spent the past twelvemonth getting the connection retired done pop-up income and regular clients portion earning wealth to money the bakery without a slope indebtedness — thing that whitethorn not person been imaginable if her erstwhile leader had stayed successful business.

“With nary work, it came to fruition,” she said.

Shlesinger’s communicative mirrors others crossed the country. Data from the Census Bureau shows that Americans filed paperwork to commencement 4.3 cardinal businesses successful 2020. In Clark County, business applications were up 27.2 percent from 2019.

Also unsocial to the Starburst Parlor is its midcentury vibe. Stepping into the bakery is similar stepping into a decades-old kitchen. Shlesinger and her friends unrecorded existent to a vintage lifestyle, with location products, cars and much each from the 1950s and 1960s. She brought that into her bakery arsenic good — the pastel walls and old-school instrumentality each reminiscent of that era.

The bakery is meant to beryllium a one-stop store for those with dietary restrictions. Beyond baked goods, Starburst Parlor besides sells sugar-free crystal pick and gluten-free pizza and bagels. Shlesinger’s recipes often regenerate emblematic flour with almond oregon coconut flour.

“It’s virtually similar surviving a dream,” she said. “I conscionable radical each time that accidental I’m helping them. Cancer survivors, Celiac, diabetics, radical connected keto, radical who’ve had a bosom onslaught — they’re each craving the things I was craving.”

But for customers, uncovering specified items elsewhere successful the Las Vegas Valley is different story, Shlesinger said. She said she knows of precise fewer different gluten-free oregon sugar-free bakeries, fto unsocial 1 offering both.

“If you person a gluten allergy, there’s similar 1 different bakery. But past accidental your different fractional is sugar-free oregon diabetic — this gives them the champion of some worlds, and everything they tin have.”

Starburst Parlor is unfastened 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays done Saturdays.

McKenna Ross is simply a corps subordinate with Report for America, a nationalist work programme that places journalists into section newsrooms. Contact her astatine mross@reviewjournal.com. Follow @mckenna_ross_ connected Twitter.