Nineteen-year-old Levavion Bailon-DeMarquez is getting ready to shake up Jamaica’s snack industry with his new flavoured popcorn business.

Speaking on Taking Stock, the young entrepreneur said the popcorn will launch across the Caribbean by September. 

His company, BakedBio, will offer two fun flavours to start: sweet and spicy barbecue, and chili lime. 

“We did so many test rounds of this that to be honest at one moment it felt like it was a dead end,” said Levavion. But he didn’t give up. 

“We persevered and we’ve now reached what we would say is a flavor that has passed the majority of our tests.”

This popcorn idea came after Levavion tried to get his cupcakes into stores. But cupcakes don’t last long on shelves, and many stores already had their own bakeries. He tried using safe preservatives, but it didn’t work well with cupcakes. So he pivoted.

“We wanted to do a product that everybody could access,” he said. That’s how popcorn became his next big idea.

Before popcorn, Levavion ran a cupcake business that started when he was just 16 years old. He used only $2,000 Jamaican dollars—money he saved from his school lunch money. 

“I remember that $2,000,” he said. “I went to the supermarket and bought a box mix, eggs, oil, and cups. That’s how it started.”

At first, he sold the cupcakes at school, the same way other students sold candy. He realised people liked them, and he loved baking. Later, he added new flavours every week, inspired by Crumble Cookie in the US. Soon, he was selling cupcake boxes with both new and favourite flavours.

The business grew. He got big clients like the Jamaica Stock Exchange, NCB Capital Markets, and the Bank of Jamaica. 

“I can only say it was an act of God,” said Levavion about getting his first big deal. He hadn’t even bought a ticket to the event where he met his first big client. But he got a last-minute invite, showed up, and made a connection that changed everything. 

“Once other persons heard yes, he did the Jamaica Stock Exchange work…everybody was just easier to convince.”

Levavion worked hard to keep up with orders, sometimes staying at the office until 3:00 a.m. and coming back at 6:00 a.m. He built a full team and opened a corporate office and factory space in New Kingston. 

“I can say hard work definitely paid off,” he said.

Even though the cupcake business was doing well, Levavion knew it couldn’t scale the way he wanted. That’s why he decided to switch to popcorn.

 “It’s not that the cupcake business wasn’t making money,” he explained. “We were highly profitable…but we were unable to scale.”

Levavion now works full-time as an entrepreneur after finishing an associate degree in business from UTech. 

He hopes to one day list BakedBio on the stock market through Jamaica’s new micro market. “It is definitely a goal of ours to be a public listed company,” he said.

BakedBio closed last year with $5.3 million in revenue and about $3 million in profit. They now have eight employees. Levavion used private loans backed by pre-sold popcorn contracts to help grow the business this year.