I own a baklava bakery in San Francisco. Life as a small business owner in a city flush with AI money has been hard.
Tolgay Karabulut is the 43-year-old owner of BaklavaStory, a bakery in San Francisco. Tolgay Karabulut Since 2022, Tolgay Karabulut has run a small baklava bakery in San Francisco. The small business owner works 12-hour days, six days a week, baking batch after batch of fresh baklava. The city's AI boom has sent rent prices skyrocketing, and earning a living has felt like an uphill battle. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Tolgay Karabulut, the 43-year-old founder of BaklavaStory, a baklava bakery in San Francisco. It has been edited for length and clarity. I've been running a baklava bakery, the thing I'm most passionate about, for the last five years. But the financial pressure I'm facing in San Francisco makes me question whether I can continue doing this forever. I moved to the United States from Turkey in 2005, when I was 21, to work as a lifeguard at a water park in New Jersey. During that time, I visited California for a month. I knew immediately I wanted to move here. I'd always been an entrepreneur at heart, trying different businesses like selling toys from China and setting up small kiosks in malls. When Silicon Valley was growing in the 2010s, my fri
Tolgay Karabulut is the 43-year-old owner of BaklavaStory, a bakery in San Francisco. Tolgay Karabulut Since 2022, Tolgay Karabulut has run a small baklava bakery in San Francisco. The small business owner works 12-hour days, six days a week, baking batch after batch of fresh baklava. The city's AI boom has sent rent prices skyrocketing, and earning a living has felt like an uphill battle. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Tolgay Karabulut, the 43-year-old founder of BaklavaStory, a baklava bakery in San Francisco. It has been edited for length and clarity. I've been running a baklava bakery, the thing I'm most passionate about, for the last five years. But the financial pressure I'm facing in San Francisco makes me question whether I can continue doing this forever. I moved to the United States from Turkey in 2005, when I was 21, to work as a lifeguard at a water park in New Jersey. During that time, I visited California for a month. I knew immediately I wanted to move here. I'd always been an entrepreneur at heart, trying different businesses like selling toys from China and setting up small kiosks in malls. When Silicon Valley was growing in the 2010s, my fri
