An illustrator who loved to bake on the side has combined her two passions to create a vegan biscuit company where she produces bespoke designs from baby bumps to pet portraits, which some customers frame instead of eating.
Esi Essel, 29, the founder and owner of Coy Biscuit, runs the business from her home kitchen and hand makes the biscuits herself since launching in 2017.
The vegan biscuits have become a huge hit through social media, and Esi says she celebrates inclusivity and body positivity with her designs.
Esi, who lives in east London with her boyfriend, Joe, 36, who manages bars, told PA Real Life: “I realised early on that I didn’t want to do freelance illustration long term and baking is something I have always loved to do.
“Combining those two things has been the best decision. It took a while to get to where I am but since going full time with business in 2022, I’m really proud of how much it has grown.
“I’m able to create really personal gifts for people and I’m very proud to be able to do that.”
When Esi attended university for illustration and graphic design, she envisioned her career as an illustrator.
She said: “After I graduated I became a freelance illustrator for a little bit but I was always baking on the side. In fact, my first job after uni was at a bakery.
“I thought that the freelance illustration lifestyle wasn’t for me long term and realised that I could put my two interests together.”
Combining her love of baking with her expertise in illustration, Esi formed Coy Biscuit in 2017.
“There were biscuit decorating brands around, but I felt like the offerings were very much just novelty biscuits and a lot of places do fondant instead of everything being hand iced,” she said.
“It also felt like the target audience for a lot of these places were mainly children and I wanted people my age to enjoy them.”
Esi said the first steps of starting her business were mostly “trial and error tests” from her kitchen.
Living with housemates at the time, the 29-year-old said she would have to wait for the kitchen to be free before she could work on her biscuits.
She said: “It was great to have people there to try them out as I figured out the flavour I wanted, but it was also logistically difficult to have to carefully time when I could use the kitchen without being in everyone’s way.
“It took up a lot of space but I was still working as an illustrator, so it wasn’t too much of an issue because it wasn’t my full time focus.”
Moving in with her boyfriend in 2019, Esi was able to hone the type of biscuit she wanted to make and got to work, initially only accepting orders for bespoke designs.
Esi’s biscuits are completely vegan, made with dairy-free butter, flour, golden syrup, sugar, vanilla bean extract and corn starch, while the designs are topped with a vegan version of royal icing.
Through social media, she began to gain a loyal customer base and as the word spread, the number of orders started to grow.
She said: “Initially a lot of the enquiries I got were things like, ‘it’s my girlfriend’s birthday, could you make the biscuit look like her?’
“But some very memorable orders have been people who get portraits of their pets drawn on the biscuit.
“Sometimes these will be of pets that have passed and they get them in memory of them. They don’t tend to eat the biscuits, they’ll preserve them and frame them which is quite touching to see and I love that I’m able to do that for them.”
During the pandemic, Esi said that her biscuit company went “on the back burner” as business slowed – but in 2022, she decided to throw all her energy into it.
Launching a staple range of biscuits for her online shop, Esi quit her job as an illustrator to keep up with orders.
Now, she has said she “makes more money” working full-time on her business than she did juggling it part-time with illustration work.
She said: “It’s still all being run from my kitchen, I do all of the orders and I like keeping my ear to the ground and being really involved in everything but if there’s a particular big order that comes through then I’ll hire someone in to help me.
“I have wedding and new baby biscuits that are available on my shop as well as the custom orders that people can request.”
One popular product from her shop is baby bumps, which come in three different skin tones, which Esi said have been very popular for baby showers.
Some particularly memorable pieces she has made include a recreation of the Grand Budapest Hotel and a portrait of a proposal for a newly engaged couple.
Esi said: “They were new challenges for me. I had to recreate the wedding proposal in detail on a very large biscuit and that was quite a feat figuring out how to do that and how to add all of the elements.
“I don’t do buildings very much, I focus more on illustrating people and focusing more on the body positivity aspect, so drawing buildings and something as intricate as the Grand Budapest Hotel, that was also quite a feat, but it turned out to be very popular on Instagram.”
The entrepreneur’s friends and family have also been supportive of her business, with Esi remarking how her parents have gone “above and beyond” to support her venture.
She said: “My parents are definitely a walking advertisement for Coy Biscuit. Everywhere they go they offer people business cards.
“They’re also my official cookie testers, I’m always sending them biscuits, probably too much for them to even consume and they’re always sharing it with friends, family and visitors.
“I also have a really supportive friend group. A lot them are also bakers but most of them do cake so we’ll support each other and collaborate on projects wherever we can.
“In the space of a year, my team has grown from just me to five people, including my PR and photographer, so that’s something I’m really proud of.”
For more information on Esi’s creations, visit: www.coybiscuit.com.
