This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Katrina Golden, 56, founder and CEO of Lil Mama’s Sweets and Treats in Augusta, Georgia. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I’ve been baking since I was a little girl. I tell people that I burned my first cake in an Easy-Bake Oven, and my dad ate it anyway.
Fast forward, I was baking a lot for friends and family, and I had some really good girlfriends who strongly encouraged me to start selling my desserts. After I retired from the federal government in August of 2019, I did just that, starting in my kitchen.
We have a space at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in downtown Augusta, and sell online.
In 2025, I noticed our sales dipping fast. The budget is extremely tight. There’s no room for error at all. We had a little bit of wiggle room before; we don’t have that now.
I think sales were down due to a combination of DOGE and people not knowing if they’re going to have a job from one week to the next. Augusta’s a military town. Even if you’re not a government employee, maybe your spouse or somebody in your family is, so you’re looking at ways of holding onto your money because you’re not sure if you’re going to see another paycheck or if your job is going to be eliminated or if it’s going to be brought back. So people were starting to pull back on buying things like coffee. Coffee is not a necessity for everybody, like it is for me.
We had more sales in 2025. However, my expenses were also higher, mainly due to tariffs.
The business started with me, my husband, and my children
The kids got roped into it. They tell me all the time that they got voluntold to help, but they were a big help.
My husband did a lot of the logistics — making us look good, helping with the signage, getting the logo designed, and suggesting how items should be displayed. The kids helped me bake and package items. Now, we have a staff that’s not all family. My husband and I run the company, and then I have a staff of three.
In 2024, we traveled a lot with a food truck festival, and we were also awarded a contract at the VA hospital to run their coffee shop. We were able to bring our baked goods there. That was going really super well.
We started noticing our sales going down March 2025, and we understand that first quarter, especially for food trucks and food businesses, everybody wants to get back on the bandwagon of eating right and eating healthy after eating crazy during the holidays.
Tariffs affected just about everything that I do
I not only run a coffee shop. I own a bakery, and we buy everything. So whatever affects the general consumer as far as groceries, it affects us as well.
This year, I raised prices across the board on my website for our products.
We buy a lot of butter, sugar, flour, eggs, milk, all of your grocery staples. We buy in bulk, and we’re affected by price changes. We buy as much as we can from local farms and local growers.
I have what I like to affectionately call an egg lady who brings me 15, 20 dozen eggs a week. But, she had to go up on her prices with me.
The price of her feed went up. So she had to raise her egg prices, which means it costs me more to buy eggs from her.
Tariffs affected our coffee; my local coffee roaster went up. But I got to buy coffee, and he had to buy his coffee beans at the tariff prices. Even though those tariffs are gone now, we’re still buying things at tariff prices because that’s what’s being sold to us.
I rely heavily on our disposables, like forks and cups, from overseas suppliers. I think it was strictly tariffs sending those prices up because there was no other reason, really.
Short of winning the lottery, I’m not quite sure what needs to change to afford more employees or to get sales back up
I don’t have to cut employee hours at the coffee shop so much, but I do have to cut them at the bakery. I’m working 12- to 14-hour days, and I’m doing all the baking myself, whereas I used to have help. I can’t afford to have somebody here more than one or two days a week to help.
I have two people working at the coffee shop. We could use a third, but I can’t afford the payroll for an extra person.
When we were going back and forth with what we call the whiplash economics, tariffs on, tariffs off, it was super hard to plan. As small business owners, we thrive on being able to project our sales. Even planning events, hiring more for the summer when it gets busier, and things of that nature, we couldn’t do because we didn’t know what our supply cost was going to be, and that means you don’t know if you can afford to hire. You don’t even know if you can afford to stay open.
And with it being on and off through the majority of last year, a lot of us in the industry were just like, screw it. We want to hire, and we know there are people out there who need the jobs, and we want to provide those jobs to them, but we can’t. I don’t want to bring somebody on and then tell them three weeks later, “I’m sorry, I have to let you go.”
Now, with hopefully the economy leveling out, we should be able to have extra people help us. Maybe our sales will go up. We don’t know.
I’m not worried about having to close my business right now because I raised prices
The contract I have at the hospital doesn’t allow me to raise the prices there too much. They want it to be affordable to the veterans and their families who come and visit, which makes it nice for the rest of the hospital community, too.
We’re still looking at low sales there, even though our prices are very competitive to Starbucks and Dunkin’.
I had to raise prices on my website. We would not be able to stay afloat. We’re hopeful that we won’t have to close anytime in the near future.
Will our customers go with the higher prices? It’s still a little early to tell.
It’s a wild ride to be a small-business owner in today’s US economy. I wouldn’t trade it, though. Baking is a passion for me, and seeing the general public enjoy what I make keeps me going.
We’re looking to scale into retail, which will allow us some stability in our revenue. So sometime late 2026 or early 2027, we hope to be on retail shelves.
I really wish they’d leave the tariff situation alone. It feels like small businesses are going to be the collateral damage.
What has it been like running a small business in the US? Reach out to this reporter to share at mhoff@businessinsider.com.
