Lauren Cain

I founded Homebaked Nearby to help home bakers — the majority of whom are women and moms — compete with national retail bakery chains in a multi-billion-dollar industry that has long been dominated by mass-produced goods and big marketing budgets.This platform was born from my own experience as a home baker, combined with a decade of work in public health. I served as a health inspector in both California and the City of Austin, where I conducted thousands of inspections, led foodborne illness investigations, and trained vendors at farmers markets. I saw firsthand the challenges home bakers face — from navigating complex state laws to struggling to grow beyond family and friends.Homebaked Nearby began as my research project in the UX Design & Research program at Cornell University. ...