Today we’d like to introduce you to Viviane Matos.
Hi Viviane, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
In 2018, we moved to Miami from Brazil as a family because my Cuban husband (Johan Gonzalez) started a job as Chemist Researcher at Florida International University (FIU). When we went to friend parties or family reunions, I bring Brigadeiros for people of other cultures get to know a little from Brazil. My stepfamily and friends always liked my culinary and sweets but never cross my mind start a business selling Brigadeiros. Not until 2020 in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic that Yennis (@yennisevent) my sister in law connect me with Lena (@dreamstoryevents) a local event planner. She tried and loved my Brigadeiros and start to buy for the parties she planned. In that moment and with a strong social media strategy born vivisweetsmiami with the help and full support of my husband. Thank God. After a year in a business, the people like our products and recommend to other persons. See the customer satisfaction and presenting the Brazilian sweets to people from different cultures is very rewarding to us.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
It’s not easy being a mom of three and start a business and at the same time do all the housekeeping job. We need to deliver all the sweets on time and managing well the time is hard. With some big orders or in special dates, usually I work very late in night to make sure all the sweets are ready for pickup beautiful and delicious. Other challenge is found the best products for make the sweets. Usually, you need to go to more than one place to get everything I need for makes the sweets tasteful and the same high quality always.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Vivisweetsmiami?
Our specialty is Brigadeiros Gourmet, the most famous Brazilian sweet, like a truffle. In my country in every party or reunion, you can found always the brigadeiros. We also sell cakes, mousses and pastries but the most wanted is decorated brigadeiros. This also sets us apart from others because we care and decorate the brigadeiros one by one following the needs and wishes of our customers to always deliver beautiful and delicious products. I am very passionate about the sweets from the begining of doing the recipe until the final decoration. Our brigadeiros are made to order for special events, gifts or simply to enjoy by yourself. We have more than 15 flavors and the most selled are traditional chocolate, coconut, covered grapes, passion fruit, churros and pistache. We are grateful to the family, friends and customers that always support us in this wonderful journey of entrepreneurship.
Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
For the people that want to start a business make a plan but don’t wait to everything is perfect to start, that time never come. Start with few products but always try to improve yourself, invest in the knowledge that will help you to deliver better and better products. I wish that I knew to manage better my time when I started selling the sweets, but now I developed a system that help me with the production of sweets.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vivisweetsmiami/
