Calgary bakery sees TikTok success as push to support local continues

Surveys show confidence among Canadian business owners are at record lows, and they're saying supporting local means more than ever.

Continued economic uncertainty has small business confidence sinking, but some Calgary businesses are seeing success thanks to social media.

Local bakery Crème Cream Puffs is a hit on TikTok—and with customers.

“March is not normally a crazy month for us, but we are doing six times the sales that we normally do in March. So, really, we’re attributing that to our success on TikTok,” said Carly Kubinec, a chef and the founder of Crème.

The videos typically feature Kubinec showing off the monthly feature flavours and some of the posts have more than 500,000 views, accompanied by comments of people from all over North America wanting to try the creations.

It couldn’t have come at a better time for the bakery.

It opened just over six years ago and joined the thousands of businesses that have been forced to navigate the pandemic, an affordability crisis and now an ever-changing tariff situation.

According to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, small-business confidence hit an all-time low last month in Canada.

“It’s lower than even the 2008 financial crisis, lower than in the wake of 9/11 and lower than at the height of the pandemic,” said Brianna Solberg, the director of provincial affairs for the CFIB.

Pushes to buy local have helped, Solberg added, and it goes a long way for businesses contemplating laying off staff or cutting back hours amid the uncertainty.

“We have research that suggests that when you choose to support a local small business, 66 cents of every dollar that you spend at a local small firm stays within the community, as opposed to only $0.11 of every dollar when you shop at a large multinational,” she said.

As consumers pull back on some spending, Kubinec says it makes a huge difference for people to choose local shops.

“When people do choose to support local, it provides jobs for people in the city,” she said.

“Obviously it’s exciting for us to see people wanting to spend their money with our business because we know there’s so many options and so much competition out there.”