Future of the Business World Podcast · Wharton Global Youth Program

Baking Up Business Lessons with "The Macaron Girl"

October 31, 2025·22 min·1 clip

Cookies start the conversation. Diana Drake welcomes Shaylee Chudasima, a junior from Irvine, California, who has run her macaron business for over three years. The tone is warm and curious. Diana lets Shaylee explain the early fun of making macarons and earning money, then moves into the less glamorous part: pricing, revenue, profit, and all the little costs hiding behind each order. Shaylee says finance caught up with her once she realized ingredients were only part of the picture. Free delivery for first orders in her community meant gas had to count. Equipment mattered too. Stand mixers and silicon sheets were already around, but once they were mostly used for production, they became business assets. That changed how she worked. Google Sheets became her new backbone. Shaylee spent about a week learning its ins and outs, then used it to track revenue, profits, and expenses instead of trying to keep the numbers in her head. Then egg prices spiked in 2023. She raised prices, but carefully, trying to protect value for customers while keeping the business healthy. Since starting, her prices have gone up about 27%, along with efforts to lower some costs and hold margins steady. The ending gets reflective. Asked whom she would interview on a business talk show, Shaylee picks Jamie Siminoff, founder of Ring, and asks when he stopped being afraid of failure.

As heard by us

A student macaron maker learns to price, track, and adapt before the sugar rush hides the margins.

A high school macaron maker turns a student business into a lesson in pricing, costs, and margins. Shaylee Chudasima walks through ingredients, delivery costs, fixed assets, Google Sheets, and the need to raise prices after egg prices spiked in 2023, so the conversation stays…

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If you want a practical high-school founder story with concrete pricing and expense-tracking details, press play.

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