Portola Valley teen’s bakery makes cakes for a good cause 

A Portola Valley teenager is using her love for cakes, cookies and cupcakes to raise money for charity. Lydia Goodson, a senior at Woodside High School, started her Brookside Bakery in 2021 and since last year,  her sweet treats go toward supporting Second Harvest Food Bank of Silicon Valley. 

With 80% of Brookside’s proceeds donated to charity, Goodson was able to raise nearly $2,000 through her bakery sales in 2025. She started her business while in middle school, offering baked goods to her neighbors and later expanded to the entire town of Portola Valley. 

“I’ve always loved baking. It was something I always did with my grandparents,” said Goodson, who says her interest in it got stronger during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

For the past two years, Goodson has been attending community college classes through the Middle College Program at Cañada College, sitting alongside students from various backgrounds and generations in the classrooms. She said that having classmates who are adults with children and rent to pay opened her eyes to a “whole new world” outside of high school. 

Every Tuesday morning, Goodson would see Second Harvest distributing food in the Cañada College parking lot. Dozens of people, including her high school and college classmates, would pick up food from the nonprofit. 

“It really just struck me how local Second Harvest’s impact is, how close it is and that really made me realize how important it is, so it led me to do some more research on it,” she said. 

Goodson was inspired by the organization’s mission to serve the community and said she decided that she wanted to contribute to it through her bakery. 

“My whole bakery is built on being community-centered, like the connection I have with my neighbors, so I just thought it was something that could really make a difference,” Goodson said.

From her sales to Portola Valley residents, she’s been able to raise hundreds of dollars each month. Goodson operates her bakery with a “pay what you can” model, taking 80% of what her customers donate to her and contributing that amount to charity. Her menu does not have set prices, she said. 

Goodson said Brookside Bakery has connected with the wider community,. She’s also spreading the word about Second Harvest to town residents, some of whom learned about the nonprofit’s existence through her bakery, she said. 

“I never would have met some of the customers without this bakery,” Goodson said. “But now I know what their favorite kind of sweet bread is and what kind of cake their mother likes. It’s just this amazing connection that I have with my town.”

Goodson said that to balance the demands of being a student and a baker, Brookside Bakery is only able to take orders from Portola Valley residents. For more information, visit brookside-bakery.com/home. 

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