What were you doing when you were 12 years old?
For Illenay, the answer involves waking up early, making pancake batter, preparing toppings, answering customer messages, creating new menu items, and thinking about where she wants her business to be five years from now.
She isn’t waiting until she’s older to start.
She’s already doing it.
At 12 years old—and soon to be 13—Illenay is the young entrepreneur behind Home Sweet Snacks, a mini pancake business she officially launched this spring.
Her menu includes stacks of warm mini pancakes covered in toppings, fruit, cookie crumbs, and drizzles.
Her most popular item is the Oreo Lover.
She’s experimenting with new flavors.
She’s adding cookies.
And someday, she hopes to serve customers from a trailer of her own.
But before any of that could happen, Illenay had to make one important decision.
She had to decide to actually begin.
She Had Always Wanted a Business
The idea started with regular pancakes.
Illenay already knew how to make them, and the people eating them kept telling her the same thing.
They were good.
Really good.
So she started wondering if those pancakes could become something more.
“I’ve always wanted to have a business,” she said.
The idea of being an entrepreneur wasn’t entirely unfamiliar to her. She had seen other people building businesses online, sharing behind-the-scenes videos, setting up products, and showing what went into creating something of their own.
She had also seen entrepreneurship within her extended circle, including a clothing business.
She watched.
She paid attention.
And eventually, she started imagining herself doing it too.
“I was like, ‘Maybe I should just go for it,’” she remembered.
So she did.
Around May 3, Home Sweet Snacks officially opened.
There was a business page.
There were products.
There were customers.
The thing she had spent time imagining was suddenly real.
Why Independence Matters to Her
When asked why she wanted to start a business at such a young age, Illenay kept coming back to one word.
Independence.
“I just really wanted to be independent,” she said.
She is quick to point out that her parents help her and have supported the business from the beginning.
But there was still something important to her about having a responsibility that belonged to her.
She wanted something to work toward.
Something that would require accountability.
Something she could build.
“I’ve always been independent,” she explained.
Starting a business gave her a place to put that part of herself.
It also gave her something to do.
Rather than sitting around bored, she could make something, learn something, serve a customer, or work toward a bigger goal.
For a 12-year-old, it’s a lot to take on.
Illenay knows that.
There were plenty of moments when she wondered whether she was really going to do it.
“A lot of them,” she said.
She would daydream about the business and then catch herself thinking:
Am I really going to do this?
The answer, eventually, was yes.
“No One’s Going to Push You If You Don’t Go Yourself”
Putting yourself out there is intimidating at any age.
Illenay was afraid too.
But she had something many young entrepreneurs need: people around her who believed she could do it.
Her family never doubted her, she said.
Her mom supported her.
And her dad helped push her to begin.
Still, Illenay understood that there was one part nobody else could do for her.
She had to be willing to go.
“No one’s going to push you if you don’t go yourself,” she remembered thinking.
That idea stayed in her mind.
So even though she was nervous, she put herself out there.
Now, she is discovering something she didn’t necessarily expect.
A business doesn’t only create customers.
It can create a community.
“You get to make a community yourself as your business,” she said.
For Illenay, that has become one of the things that stands out most.
People follow along.
They try the food.
They request products.
They leave reviews.
And little by little, something that started as an idea in her head becomes something other people get to be part of too.
The Oreo Lover Is the One Everyone Wants
Every business owner eventually discovers that customers have favorites.
At Home Sweet Snacks, there is already a clear winner.
The Oreo Lover.
“Definitely the Oreo Lover,” Illenay said when asked about her most popular item.
Customers have requested it, tried it, and reviewed it.
“It’s going so good,” she said.
It also happens to be one of her favorite products to make.
Part of that is practical.
Mini pancakes with fruit require extra preparation. The fruit has to be cut, arranged, and placed carefully so the finished order looks good.
The Oreo Lover is simpler.
The pancakes cook.
The cookie crumbs go on.
Then come the toppings and drizzles.
It moves quickly.
And when you are the person responsible for making the food, speed matters.
An order of mini pancakes takes Illenay about 10 to 12 minutes from beginning to end.
The pancakes cook for around three minutes on each side. Then she spends several more minutes adding the toppings and finishing the order.
The batter?
She makes that herself.
Running a Food Business Means Always Thinking About What Comes Next
From the outside, a mini pancake business might look simple.
Make pancakes.
Add toppings.
Sell them.
But Illenay has already learned that there is more happening behind the scenes.
One of the biggest challenges?
Coming up with new flavors.
“What toppings you’re going to put on, what drizzles you want to add to it, and all that stuff,” she explained.
Her newest mini pancake flavor is Fruity Pebble, which she added to her signature stack menu.
And she isn’t stopping with pancakes.
She has also been working on an Oreo Lover cookie.
That means more ideas to test.
More ingredients to prepare.
More things to make before opening.
It also means earlier mornings.
Illenay said she has recently started becoming a morning person.
She used to wake up around 9 or 10.
Now, her body sometimes wakes her up before 8, ready to start the day.
“Let’s start the day,” she described the feeling. “Let’s go prep.”
It helps when she is excited about what is coming.
There are pancakes to make.
Cookies to bake.
Customers to serve.
And something new to try.
She’s Still a Student Too
Of course, Illenay isn’t only a business owner.
She is also a student.
That means Home Sweet Snacks has to work around school.
During the school year, she generally opens on Saturdays and Sundays, and sometimes Fridays when her schedule allows.
“If I have the chance to open, I’m going to open,” she said.
That might be one of the clearest examples of how seriously she takes what she is building.
She isn’t pretending school, family plans, and life don’t exist.
She works around them.
She finds the available time.
And when she has the opportunity to open, she takes it.
For many adults, starting a business gets delayed because life is busy.
Illenay is learning, at 12, how to build within the life she already has.
The Dream Is a Trailer
Ask Illenay where she wants Home Sweet Snacks to go, and she already has a picture in her mind.
A trailer.
A cute one.
One she can use to take the business to more places.
“I really want to have a trailer,” she said.
For Illenay, the appeal isn’t only how it would look.
She has already thought through how it could make the business easier.
A trailer would make Home Sweet Snacks more mobile.
She could take it to events.
She could cater.
She wouldn’t have to bring a table and set everything up from scratch every time.
She could arrive ready to serve.
In five years, success looks like that.
A trailer.
Catering events.
Bookings.
Growth.
But even when she talks about those things, Illenay doesn’t describe success only as what she hopes to own.
She talks about being able to look back.
“I feel like the business—it really comes down to seeing yourself, how much you’ve grown with the business.”
That is a surprisingly big idea for someone who is still at the very beginning.
Success isn’t only getting somewhere.
Sometimes, it is being able to see how far you came.
Right Now, the Goal Is to Grow
Illenay has plenty of dreams outside of one business.
She wants to achieve her goals.
She wants to become as successful as she can be.
But right now, when it comes to Home Sweet Snacks, her focus is simple.
Grow.
“Growing is the main priority I want to do right now,” she said.
That growth might look like more customers.
More followers.
More events.
New flavors.
Catering opportunities.
Or, eventually, the trailer she can already picture.
But every one of those things begins with what she is doing now.
Making the batter.
Preparing the toppings.
Waking up early.
Opening when she has the chance.
Answering messages.
Trying something new.
And continuing to put herself out there, even when it feels scary.
Illenay is only 12.
She doesn’t know exactly where Home Sweet Snacks will go yet.
She doesn’t need to.
She already did the hardest part.
She started.
And somewhere between the first pancake and the dream of a trailer, she is learning something many people spend years trying to understand:
Sometimes nobody can make you go.
You have to decide to go yourself.
How to Order From Home Sweet Snacks
Customers can place orders with Illenay through the Home Sweet Snacks Instagram account. She also shares updates about openings, new menu items, and her business on social media.
The Oreo Lover is currently her most popular mini pancake stack, and new products—including her Oreo Lover cookie—are part of what she is working on next.
Illenay’s story, goals, menu details, and quotations in this feature come from our interview with the young Home Sweet Snacks owner.
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