“Baking up” your success: the story of Ms. Mzia, a Georgian immigrant entrepreneur in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn

Written by Khatia Mikadze

“New York City is a place where you can find your own formula of success,” says Ms. Mzia, while serving her pastries to waiting customers standing in line. The owner of a tiny traditional Georgian bakery located on a street corner of Little Odessa, in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach neighborhood, she attracts locals from different ethnic groups with her exceptional cooking and baking skills. The bakery serves Georgian food such as “Khachapuri” (cheesy bread), “Shoti” (oven-baked boat-shaped bread), “Sacivi” (chicken dish with walnuts sauce), and many sweets including cakes and creamy pastries, baked only by Ms. Mzia. As locals commonly say, “you taste once and you will be back;” Ms. Mzia’s food has become very popular, especially among Eastern European immigrants who come for hot and fresh bread on a daily basis, not to mention the long lines that form outside the bakery during important festivities and religious holidays. Ms. Mzia notes that she is sometimes overwhelmed by the large number of customers she has to tend to, but she also feels happy that her bakery has turned into a community spot where her co-ethnics meet, socialize, and advertise cultural and social events.

Ms. Mzia (left) and her assistant at the Brick Oven Bread bakery in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn

Ms. Mzia is one of many women immigrants in New York City who have come a long way to become her own boss and a successful entrepreneur. She immigrated to the US from Georgia in 1989 to support her family and children back home. During this period, the Soviet Union was on the verge of breaking apart, harsh social and economic ramifications for Georgia. Poor life conditions drove the largest migration wave out of the country. Interestingly, this particular wave was dominated by Georgian women who took up the role of breadwinner for their family, and left their home country in search for better economic opportunities. Ms. Mzia did just that. She held an advanced degree in music from Georgia but said that she could not use it because “nobody needed Soviet degrees in the US.” In order to earn enough money to support her family, she started working at a big cafe-bakery owned by a Russian Jewish woman on Brighton Beach Avenue in Brooklyn. To this day, she hurtfully remembers that she was paid $3 per hour for hard physical labor – this was quite a standard wage at the time. “As an acknowledged musician in my home country, physical labor was very unfamiliar for me, and I spent many days dreaming about the day when I would meet my children again,” Ms. Mzia told me. Her main challenge, as she recalls, was the language barrier; the only way to communicate with her boss was “to cook her best,” so that she could keep her job. Eventually more people started asking for Ms. Mzia’s Khachapuri and pastries at the Russian bakery. In just a year, it became the most popular bakery in the Brighton Beach community and beyond. Soon after, the bakery started receiving orders for catering leading the owner, in turn, to make investments to enlarge her store.

Regardless of the long hours and hard work she had to put in, Ms. Mzia says she always felt a special support from her boss, who also was a woman: “she knew what I was going through and how hard I was trying to raise my children back home … we both were immigrants and she took me as her sister; as a result, we both succeeded together.”

After five years at the Russian bakery, working six days a week and 12 to 13 hours a day, Ms. Mzia decided it was time to start her own business. She used the trust and network she had built among Eastern European immigrants in the neighborhood and beyond. Although she was already a famous baker and cook, she still struggled in face of this important decision. What if she could not make it alone? What if the language barrier was too big a hurdle to overcome? How would she handle the legal and regulatory side of business? What if she’d lose support from her friends in the process? There were many details that she had to consider, but she wanted to be an example for other Georgian women who were struggling just like her.

She remembers: “I was afraid but I decided to be hopeful; I knew I was a woman immigrant who was not expected to succeed as our male counterparts, but I had faith in myself; I knew that I could achieve something big. I never let fear occupy my mind, positivity and determination gave me the courage to open my first bakery.”

She asked other women immigrants to pledge money for her bakery, hired three Georgian women immigrants to help her bake cakes, and two male immigrants to bake Georgian bread. She consulted with her friends to develop a business plan and fulfill legal procedures, and soon after, she was ready to open the bakery. Since then, delicious and tempting smell of freshly baked bread do not leave the nearby streets of Brighton Beach. Ms. Mzia proudly remarks that she has recently received several business and partnership offers to open up more branches on Manhattan and brand her product, but she is not sure if she wants to leave her community just yet. She says that she feels like home in Brooklyn and there is a lot more she can

do for her co-ethnics and other local immigrants in Brighton Beach. However, she is considering hiring someone knowledgeable to help her look at these options and expand her business.

Ms. Mzia’s story is inspiring. It opens doors to different perspectives, and questions how we look at women immigrants, and who we consider entrepreneurs. It teaches us how much women are capable of and how far their determination and creativity can lead them. When we picture an immigrant entrepreneur, we are more likely to imagine a man who immigrated to the US with his family and started his own business. But in this picture we are missing countless women immigrants who have become successful entrepreneurs themselves. Today, the number of female immigrant entrepreneurs is rapidly growing in every region of the United States. As of 2010, 40 percent of all immigrant business owners were women. Still, the realization that women immigrants are the owners of some of our favorite restaurants, beauty salons, hotels, and even Silicon Valley hi-tech firms, has yet to be recognized by state agencies and business firms.

Here is an advice from Ms. Mzia: “Do whatever you really love and do not be afraid of challenges. Eventually, you will overcome them with patience. Sometimes I feel the breathing of my dough and  remind myself that the success came through my dedication to what I love, and my positive attitude towards life. Do whatever you love and maintain good relationships.”