Meet Kaytlin Ebora

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kaytlin Ebora. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Kaytlin, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

For a long time I thought my “purpose” needed to be a career. In my early 20s I remember feeling like I didn’t have a purpose. I had tried going to school and couldn’t commit to a degree. I went to school for early childhood education, horticulture, dental hygiene, never really feeling like anything stuck. I had been working at a drive through coffee shop and realized I felt the most fulfilled there. I was drawn to the aspect of the company that was focused on caring for the customers. It became so important to me to be able to pour into my community by caring for people through something as simple as a cup of coffee. When the time came for me to leave that company after spending time working at the headquarters and in management it had become clear that my purpose was to build and invest in community. In 2020 I started my business, Kayt’s Kitchen. While I found so much passion and enthusiasm for baking and recipe development my purpose, my “why” remained the same-pour into people, invest in my community. I’ve been extremely fortunate to run my business and donate in kind to different charities in my town. I currently run my business, work as a recess attendant at the elementary school I went to, and serve as Executive Director for our local downtown coalition. Finding out that my purpose and my why could be carried with me no matter what I did professionally was a huge revelation.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I run my business Kayt’s Kitchen out of a foodtruck in Downtown Newberg. It is a bakery foodtruck and we currently serve fresh bagels (yes, boiled first) and sandwiches on the weekend, and pastries featuring nostalgic flavors and seasonal local produce. I try to donate to charity dinners for local organizations and schools when I can. When I started I did as many pop ups and markets and events as I could. The last few years I’ve dialed it back so that I have more energy to invest locally. I love using local seasonal produce and feel the most inspired in the spring and summer. I love to use fresh edible flowers and edible glitter and making pastries that look like fairy food. I get asked a lot how I come up with the combinations I do for pastries and sandwich specials and a lot of the time I will choose an ingredient and build around it. I’m definitely a “type B” baker-it’s usually full chaos in my kitchen. I also work as an Executive Director at our local downtown coalition. My work there has grown from volunteering to being a board member to being on the executive committee to sharing the ED role with a teammate and now to serving as the ED. I was drawn to the downtown coalition because I loved the community events that we put in. We put on the local Wednesday Market in partnership with our Parks and Recreation organization among many others. The Market holds a special place in my heart because it is where I really launched my business. I love coordinating volunteers and helping run successful community events. We also serve as a liaison to the City for our local downtown merchants and I have found a lot of new passion working on the back end digging in to legal definitions and public relations. We also work with the Oregon Main Street organization to provide our downtown merchants with grant opportunities and support.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

-Find your “why”. There is a book by Simon Sinek that I read when I was working in management called “Find Your Why”. When you know what your why is you give yourself the foundation to move confidently through life.
– Believe the good things people are saying, and learn from the bad things. I learned the hard way that you will never be able to please everyone. You’re going to make mistakes. You can’t beat yourself up when things don’t go as planned. Once you find your why, get comfortable being confident in yourself and the work that you do.
– Surround yourself with people who believe in you and what you do. No matter how independent you may be, you cannot move through the world without a village in your corner. So many of the road bumps I’ve hit professionally and personally were navigated with the support of my community.

I think the best advice I could give is to be comfortable being scared and doing it anyway. That carries over in to starting a business, going for a job with experience that looks different than the norm, trusting others enough to rely on them, and so much more. Make an effort to make connections to people who are doing things that you admire and want for yourself. Don’t underestimate what you can learn from others and teach in return.

How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?

This is a really captivating question for me, because I was recently diagnosed with a rare form of stage 4 cancer. It’s a question I’ve that I have had to really consider. Am I happy working 7 days a week? If not where can I dial it back? Is the work I’m doing still fulfilling my “why”? If not how do I redirect. How do I want to prioritize my time being faced with the cold reality of not knowing how much I have and how healthy and active I’ll be for it. What am I not okay sacrificing anymore? What it boils down to for me is making sure I give myself time to live. Any regret I’ve felt in the last 5-10 years is having my nose so close to the grindstone that I’ve sacrificed my time with people and things that I’ll never get back. Work and your business can feel like the most important thing in the world especially in the early years. Don’t let tunnel vision take things that are important to you.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Kaytskitchen.com
• Instagram: Kaytskitchen