Lazy Daisy’s Founder: 5 Confessions of 2025
by Dawn Chapman,
Founder & CEO Lazy Daisy’s Café & Lazy Daisy Foods
Let’s put it this way, 2025 wasn’t all ‘coming up Daisies’.
You know that kids’ sing-song rhyme where the kid picks a dandelion (or a daisy), holds it by the stem with their thumb under the flower and sings innocently, “Mama had a baby and her head popped off’? Then tidily severs the head from the stem like it was one of Henry VIII’s many wives?
Many times throughout 2025, that was me. Not the kid, but the daisy with its head lolling around in the field wondering how the heck it got there!
Daisy’s definitely had some epic wins which we are incredibly grateful for, like:
· Launching into Whole Foods, Nature’s Emporium and Goodness Me! Supermarkets
· Creating one of the most beautiful, talked about café patios in the city with designer Tiffany Pratt
· Winning Chatelaine Magazine’s Best Frozen Breakfast in their inaugural Pantry Awards
· Winning the Telus #StandWithOwners award
Wow. Those are all amazing, but I must confess, the momentum for both Lazy Daisy’s Café and Lazy Daisy Foods had almost as much to do with the wins as the losses.
So pull up a comfy chair and a plate o’ biscuits and I’ll tell you all about it….
🌼 Confession #1: We Shut Down Daisy Dinners — And It Was Exactly What We Needed
We poured time, love, and energy into our Daisy Dinners — And… they didn’t work. We tweaked the menus, adjusted the hours but they never took off.
We pushed hard, we gave it a long runway (a whole year!) Customers loved our smashburgers on a biscuit, but not enough to keep the lights on.
And finally, we called it a day. I felt like I’d failed. How come I couldn’t make it work?
Shutting Daisy Dinners down forced me to re-examine what people actually want from Lazy Daisy’s:
Easy, joyful, homemade food that brings people together without the stress.
So instead, the team brainstormed and launched our own Lazy Daisy’s Catering — simple, delicious, crowd-pleasing brunch and comfort-food options for gatherings big and small.
And guess what?
It’s going gangbusters.
Turns out, people want the same things they love about the café — farm-fresh food, warmth, ease — delivered right to their door.
Whew. Lesson learned…it’s ok to fail, you just can’t be afraid to try. A fail can be an opportunity to change.
Your harshest judge is probably yourself – so put down the mallet, take off the long grey wig and black robe and give yourself a hug instead.
🧊 Confession #2: The Titanic Tilt – When Production Went Sideways
Our line of frozen bake-at-home biscuits grew into 180+ stores across Ontario this year —.
But the chaos? Oh, it was real.
I leased a 16k piece of equipment to help us speed up production.
We excitedly ran our first test. Then another and another.
Turns out this expensive piece of equipment doesn’t work on our delicate dough. Now, the machine is gathering dust while I figure out what to do. Not only am I making monthly payments on it but it’s living rent free in my head.
One week before our massive Whole Foods order needed to be delivered one of our two mixers broke. I put a call out on Facebook for a loaner and someone in Newmarket kindly lent us theirs…what a relief! We plugged it in….a guess what? It didn’t work. #MurphysLaw
It was all hands-on deck. The Daisy team really came together and made that delivery happen with pure grit and determination…
But that situation forced us to rethink and rebuild part of our process — and that improvement is now the backbone of our ability to scale nationally in 2026!
💛 Confession #3: The Best Moments Were the Quiet Ones
Yes, the numbers matter. The retail doors matter. The milestones matter.
But this year’s real highlights were:
• Customers dm’ing us photos of their home baked Daisy’s biscuits
• The friendly smiles and chats with café regulars
• Making friends with other Founders trading encouragement like hockey cards
• Retailers messaging us saying how much their customers are loving our products and placing a new order
• A team that brought heart to every shift and every handmade batch of biscuits
These quiet moments aren’t always the ones that get the attention, but they are the ones that feed the soil and help this Daisy grow.
🔥 Confession #4: I Scream in the Car with the Windows Up
I remember once as a teenager driving in the car with my dad and I told him I was feeling really stressed. Exam pressure, bad boyfriends, no money.
“I feel like I could scream,” I said.
Dad turned to look at me and said, “So why don’t you?”
“What? Here? In the car?”
“Ya. Why not.”
He pulled over the car and put his hands over his ears.
“Ok go. As loud as you want.”
Well, I let ‘er rip. I thought the car windows would shatter but the only thing that broke was the stranglehold that stress had on me. I was shocked, post scream I felt as relaxed as a yogi in an ashram.
My dad was also shocked that I could hit that many decibels.
Now as a Founder growing two businesses, when the problem solving and things to do list piles up, ‘windows up loud scream’ is my go-to for quick and cost-effective stress relief. I highly recommend!
🙏 Final Confession: I Forget to Be Grateful
The day-to-day of running a café, a frozen biscuit company, and a family is equal parts exhilarating and overwhelming.
I love the idea of a steady gratitude practice. I admire the people who journal every morning, who pause to breathe, who light a candle and reflect.
I am… not that person.
I’m a little more haphazard.
My gratitude shows up when it can — in quick flashes, scribbled notes, or moments in between the chaos.
There’s a hand-written post-it on my desk that reads:
“Lead from a place of gratitude.”
Some days I nail it.
Some days I absolutely do not.
But I keep trying.
And when I look back on this year — the pivots, the fails, the big steps forward, the tiny miracles — I’m reminded that gratitude doesn’t have to be perfect or poetic.
You just have to mean it.
And I mean this: I am grateful for you — our customers, our team, our partners, and everyone who helped us grow — whether you stopped by the café, grabbed our biscuits at the supermarket, ordered catering, wrote a positive review or shared us with a friend — thank you.
You helped a small, woman-led Canadian food business bloom.
Here’s to more wins, more pivots that turn into wins, and a whole lot of biscuits in 2026.
— Dawn
Founder & CEO
Lazy Daisy’s Café & Lazy Daisy Foods