Cinthya Romrielli, Owner/Pastry Chef of Cinful Sweets in Austin Texas doesn’t like to take ‘no’ for an answer.
Cinthya discovered her pastry passion while working as a teacher and seeing the joy her homemade cookies brought her students. This prompted her to enroll in culinary school.
Unfortunately, hyper-creative Romrielli discovered that the pastry ideas she put forth at the myriad venues she worked fell on deaf ears. Cinthya shared, ’When you’re an entry-level pastry chef, you get used to people telling you, ‘No.’
Feeling dejected, Cinthya took time off to travel and feed her pastry passion by studying under award-winning pastry chefs and chocolatiers such as Antonio Bachour, Norman Love and Susan Notter, as well as the U.S. Pastry Team, to name a few.
Cinthya also began to dabble in chocolate making which she soon discovered was her true pastry calling. ‘Chocolate making is truly in my heart. Used as a canvas to pair with different flavors, chocolate is a symphony in your mouth.’
With Cinthya’s parents having been born and raised in Honduras, Cinthya discovered an even deeper connection to chocolate and cacao spawned by her ancestral roots.
However, despite her newfound joy of working with chocolate, Cinthya was increasingly disheartened with the limits of her pastry profession positions. Deciding she needed a change, she quit her job and registered for several classes in New York to pursue her goal of being a Master Pastry Chef. This experience was the catalyst Romrielli needed to feel equipped to open her own shop.‘ ’I saw the tools they were using, not just in chocolate making, but in operations. I realized running my own business was very doable.’
The final turning point that propelled Cinthya to open a business was the passing of her beloved brother in 2018 from a lifelong illness of sickle cell anemia. Cinthya shared, ‘He left me his life insurance and said, now you can open up your big shop. You don’t have to deal with people saying no to you all the time.’
Cinful Sweets opened on March 19, 2021. Romrielli, Master Pastry Chef and Certified Chocolatier shared a full circle moment she had with her family prior to opening. ‘My parents, who played in the cacao trees as kids, would always tell me and my sister about their dream of wanting to open a chocolate shop if they had stayed. The week prior to the grand opening of Cinful Sweets, my parents and sister came to help me with production. My family looked at me and said, ‘Oh my gosh! Wow! You’re really doing this!
