Meet Ballanah Torbett | PhD Candidate & Baker

We had the good fortune of connecting with Ballanah Torbett and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ballanah, do you have any habits that you feel contribute to your effectiveness?
A habit I’ve acquired that helps me succeed is persistence. You have to be persistent to be an effective scientist, and of course to be a successful small business baker you need to persist in generating new ideas/recipes, executing them, and troubleshooting them. It can be a pretty tough blow when you take risks and they don’t pay off, but it’s an opportunity to grow. It takes time and patience to tailor a process that works for you, and persistence looks a little different to everybody. For me I identify what went wrong, a few different solutions to the issue, and what I could do for a better result next time. Even if something doesn’t work, I always grow from the evaluation I do afterwards. It’s a little funny how that approach works whether I’m in the lab, or baking for customers!

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I started my bakery, Melati Bakes, as kind of a side hustle. The word “Melati” means jasmine flower in Malay, and it’s a nod to my maternal heritage. It’s a pretty common joke among PhD students that if grad school fails we’ll all just open bakeries, and I always thought it was funny that I was making it a reality (obviously without giving up on the PhD)! Since I enjoyed baking for friends and family, I wanted to explore that passion as a potential business.
I found that people with dietary restrictions like diabetes or ingredient sensitivities can be limited in the baked goods they can enjoy, and I wanted them to be able to experience the joy of a fresh scone or hand pie. My philosophy is, just like you need high quality reagents for a successful experiment, you need high quality ingredients for delicious baked goods. I take pride in making everything from scratch, and sourcing fresh produce. I took a lot of habits from the lab into the kitchen with me, and I put a lot of effort into optimizing my recipes and baking techniques.
Of course, being a lab rat doesn’t prepare you for learning how to run a business. When I first started my bakery, I had some trouble putting myself out there and pricing my baked goods what they’re worth. How do I get visibility for my work? How can I expand my customer base? How do I even compete with other bakers? I networked with a lot of other entrepreneurs and learned how to feel comfortable taking more risks, calculated and not. It’s a work in progress, but I’m happy that running a small business bakery has become my own personal science.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I would recommend taking full advantage of how diverse Atlanta is. My favorite food places off of Buford Highway are Batavia and Las Tortas Locas. There are a lot of places to get really good Asian desserts too, like Meet Fresh or Matcha Cafe Maiko. I like being outdoors, and the metro area has really nice walking trails, like the Path400 Greenway or the Silver Comet Trail, which goes all the way west to Alabama. The Atlanta bar scene is nice as well, I’ve always had a good time at Jojo’s Beloved or Spaceman.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
There are so many! I’m grateful to the scientists and PhD students I’ve met during my graduate school journey. I entered the field with so many unreasonable expectations of myself and what I should be accomplishing, and during the beginning of my PhD it negatively affected my mental health. I had to lean heavily on my peers for support and I was able to come out the other end better than ever. They encouraged me and reminded me of who this journey was really for: me! Having a great community around me really redefined what it means to be a scientist. It’s not all about living in the lab, generating data, and it’s certainly not the end of the world if I fail one time, like younger me would have thought. I’ve really been able to explore and transfer different skills outside an academic environment too. Learning to communicate science to friends and family in an accessible way helped me develop my public speaking skills, and refining my scientific process in the lab made it easier for me to improve the recipes and marketing strategy for my bakery.

I’m also grateful to those I’ve met working in restaurants as an undergraduate. I worked both front and back of house, and met so many people from different walks of life at these jobs. I’ve met IT specialists who make music and CNAs who love to cook and cater. Late night conversations over cutting limes and stacking plates taught me an important lesson: it’s always worth it to pursue your passions. I’m passionate about being the best scientist I can be, but I’m also very passionate about providing homemade baked goods for my community. I learned that I don’t have to sacrifice one passion for another, and that I can foster them both and develop myself.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melati.bakes/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ballanah-torbett-438b571b4/