Pia Saronde

Local cuisine is her mom’s specialty, and her sister runs a bakery. Following in her family’s footsteps, Sakinah mastered the art of baking pia, a well-known pastry named after a local dance and a nearby island. As her pies brought joy to family and friends, she decided to turn her passion into a profession. In 2010, Sakinah created Pia Saronde, her own chain of pastry and gift shops in Gorontalo on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.

Cooking is in Sakinah Ali’s blood. For years, Sakinah only distributed batches of her baked goods to local businesses and sold to customers who came to her first store. Eager to make her offerings — including pia pastries filled with everything from chocolate and cheese to durian and mung beans — available across Indonesia, in 2017, she introduced online sales via Pia Saronde’s website and social media handles. With her personal phone number inundated with customer inquiries, Sakinah needed a way to manage her business’s growth.

So, in 2018, she bought a new mobile phone number and downloaded the WhatsApp Business app.

“Now, we route every inquiry we receive via various online channels to our WhatsApp Business number. And most customers who contact us directly on WhatsApp do so with the intent to buy.”

Sakinah Ali

Owner, Pia Saronde

The WhatsApp Business app’s labels feature helps this growing business classify and organize customer inquiries. And the business profile feature means customers — far and wide — can find Sakinah’s three brick-and-mortar stores more easily.

“I like to ask them for photos and video clips of the packaging, to show me details of the product, especially the expiry date,” says a customer, who orders Pia Saronde products in large quantities for her own business located more than 1,470 miles away in Ngawi, Central Java.

Sakinah dreams of opening a Pia Saronde branch in every major city in Sulawesi. And with the WhatsApp Business app helping better organize her business, sharing pia pastry and her own unique recipes with more customers is easier than ever before.