What began as a stress-relieving side project has blossomed into a thriving business for Annie Vu ’07. For almost 10 years now, Annie’s Petite Treats has been dishing out all sorts of scrumptious sweets, from bite-sized cake pops to elaborate floral cakes, and it all started with a leap of faith when she decided to leave behind a successful corporate career.
After completing an internship, Rackspace hired Vu when she graduated from Trinity University. She held multiple roles within the company in the seven or so years she worked there, including marketing, events, and community outreach. From there, Vu went to work for a nonprofit called Choose to Succeed, which aims to attract the top charter schools to the San Antonio area.
During her later years at Rackspace and Choose to Succeed, Vu would unwind by kneading the day’s stress into delicious baked goods that she would bring to her colleagues and friends. As word got out, her baking hobby quickly turned into an all-night affair.
“People started ordering from me, and the next thing I know, I’m staying up until three or four o’clock in the morning finishing these orders. I was lucky if I could sneak in a power nap before I had to be back at work,” Vu recalls. “I just imagined grinding like that every day and having to choose between my passion or continuing to work for someone else.”
At first, Vu was worried about putting all of her eggs in one basket with Annie’s Petite Treats, but she realized that it was not sustainable to juggle her full-time job with her business. In 2014, she decided to go all in on Annie’s Petite Treats.
“I love getting lost in my baking world and creating something that makes someone smile,” Vu says. “Just gifting somebody some treats and seeing how it changes their day made me feel good. It was so different from the mundane daily schedule and the stresses of work."
While still working full time, Annie Vu '07 became known for her cake pops and smaller treats that she would bring to colleagues.
Vu, a first-generation American, was born and raised in Houston, where she lived with her immigrant Vietnamese family. Food brought her extended family together, and she has fond memories of baking cookies with a lightbulb in her Easy Bake Oven and inventing new recipes with ingredients from the pantry.
“Food has always been my love language. Cooking for other people has been a huge part of my life,” Vu reflects. “My mom worked long hours six days a week, so cooking dinner with my mom was our way of connecting. It was really the only time that we had together where we could talk and catch up on each other’s days.”
Upon her early graduation from high school, Vu turned down full-ride scholarships to state schools to accept the President’s Scholarship and enroll at Trinity University.
“The overnight stay when I was touring sold me on Trinity. It was such a fun experience, and the school was so beautiful. It was small and intimate and felt a little less scary than going to a big state school. Trinity just felt like home immediately,” Vu says.
Vu majored in speech communication (now human communication) and minored in history and media studies.
“I wanted to do everything when I got to Trinity. I feel like that’s the fun part of Trinity—you can study so many different things, and once you fall in love with a topic you can go even deeper,” Vu says. “I think I was probably going to lean towards political science because I wanted to be a lawyer at the time, but then I started taking the communication and speech communication classes and really enjoying them.”
Vu appreciates how encouraging so many of her Trinity professors were, recounting a time when she enrolled in an upper-division course earlier than most students would. Leslie Brooks Hill pulled her aside to make sure she knew that it was a more difficult course and allowed her to take it. Vu did really well in the class, and that moment of trust and encouragement stuck with her. Vu also credits Andrew Hanson, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Human Communication and Theatre, and Linda and Richard Salvucci with developing her critical thinking skills.
Annie's Petite Treats has fulfilled numerous orders from the Trinity community, from care packages to cakes celebrating milestones like birthdays or graduation
Vu remained connected to Trinity after she began Annie’s Petite Treats, albeit in an unexpected way. A mother of a Trinity student discovered her business and learned that Vu was a Trinity alumna. The mother shared Vu’s information with other Trinity parents in an email list she had started to connect families of incoming first-years. The next thing Vu knew, she was receiving tons of orders from parents who wanted to send their students care packages.
“A large chunk of my business comes from Trinity families. I deliver the orders to the Witt Center, and the students come pick them up,” Vu explains. “I love how it was a really nice, easy way for parents to connect with their kids, and I remember how much it meant to get a care package.”
Over the years, Vu has even had parents send her family recipes to replicate for their children to comfort them during difficult times like a breakup or finals week or to help celebrate milestones like birthdays and graduations. She believes the personal relationships she builds with her customers is what makes Annie’s Petite Treats special.
“It’s like watching your kids grow up. I just recently did a wedding for two Trinity graduates. I had been doing treats for that student all four of his years at Trinity, and now his brother is at Trinity, too,” Vu says.
Annie’s Petite Treats started by specializing in cake balls and bite-sized creations, but Vu has expanded her portfolio to include larger cakes. She most enjoys creating her floral cakes.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought on the biggest challenges Vu had faced since starting Annie’s Petite Treats. With parties and celebrations canceled and Trinity students back home, Vu had to pivot but was still able to have a record year.
With her daughter’s help, Vu put together DIY baking kits with a recipe card and all of the required ingredients. She would then deliver the kits or her customers would do a contactless porch pick-up from her home. Vu and her daughter, who was three at the time, would hop on Instagram Live every Thursday afternoon for a live baking session with families logged in and following along, and while their recipes baked in the oven, they would have storytime with their favorite books. As the live baking sessions grew in popularity, Vu invited local librarians and storytellers like Anastasia McKenna from The Twig Book Shop to log in and host storytime.
“The live baking sessions saved my business. It was a really amazing, wholesome experience at a time when we really didn’t know what was going on in the world or how things would turn out. It was bonding time for me and my daughter, but it also connected other parents with their children as they learned new skills together and created this sense of community,” Vu says.
Vu takes pride in her two children, now 7 and almost 3 years old, seeing her successfully juggle parenthood and running her own business.
“I get to do something that I love every day,” Vu says. “I get to share that with my kids, and my kids get to see me do something that I love doing and something that they love doing with me. When my daughter asks if we can bake something together, I always say yes.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Vu created baking kits that her customers could use to bake along with Vu and her daughter during a weekly Instagram Live baking session.
When Vu thinks back to leaving her corporate job, she remembers how scary it was walking away from benefits like health insurance and a steady paycheck, but she believes it was all absolutely worth it.
“It feels amazing to be able to walk away from a career and do something that you’re passionate about and be in control of your own destiny. Taking that leap has allowed me to have the honor of being a sweet part of so many milestones in the lives of my customers, and it’s always especially meaningful to connect with Trinity families.”
To learn more about Annie’s Petite Treats, check out the listing in Trinity University's Alumni Business Directory, or follow Annie’s Petite Treats on Instagram.
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