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Baker tips
5 Tips To Simplify Your Baking Business
Melissa Jimenez
Balancing your business and personal life is no easy task, but don’t worry, you are not alone. Scheduling, prepping, baking, and fulfilling orders feels like a big challenge when first starting a baking business. As your client base grows, more time is spent on arduous tasks like sending out order confirmations, logging payments, and keeping orders organized. If that’s not enough, it can feel overwhelming to calculate ingredients and project monthly profits. After all, you got into this to bake, not take on another desk job. Simply Bread cares about your baking business success, so we teamed up with some outstanding bakers to share 5 tips that will simplify the way you run your business.
1. Organize Your Bake Space
Organization is a big factor in the success or failure of your business. Though it’s a simple concept, organization can be a huge time saver that often gets overlooked. Sydney Chastain from Joy Artisan Bakery gave us a tour of her baking space and shared some of her helpful workflow hacks: “Ingredients are organized by recipe – bagels, cookies, bread.” This way, instead of searching for each ingredient, Sydney simply grabs and goes - no thought needed. The less you need to think through something, the quicker and more automatic it becomes. Everything is placed in clear containers so she can see what she is running low on and might need to restock. She also has designated spaces for scoring, cooling, and packaging, which helps keep her space uncluttered and her mind clear. Before moving into her converted garage space, she used a second refrigerator in the garage for her bread dough so she would have enough prepped for bake days. Sydney makes lists for prep and delivery; daily to-do lists help her stay on schedule and prioritize what needs to get done before she does it.
If you don’t have enough space to work with in the beginning, evaluate your tasks and stagger any that require a good deal of space. A great way to expand the use of your countertop is by first using it to shape and score your bread and then clearing it for cooling racks while your bread is baking. Organizing your tasks this way will ensure more efficiency and less stress during the prep and baking process.
2. Batch Organization
How do you schedule your baking? Do you have designated prep days and bake days or are you currently doing a mix of both? Perhaps you’re catering to your clients’ schedule? The best way to save yourself from juggling tasks is by grouping common tasks together. Sydney’s primary income is now sourced from her weekly Farmer’s Market sales: 60 to 80 sourdough loaves, 300 Bagels, 300 cookies and her online sales of dehydrated sourdough starter and baking mixes. Her starter and mixes allow her to optimize her time:
It’s helpful to have something that can be made days and weeks in advance. When I first started, sourdough, the long schedule, the stretch and folds, it gets overwhelming - I had to figure out how to tailor it to the kids’ schedules, nap times, and preschool pickups. Now that I have that cadence down, it’s been pretty seamless.
Sydney does the majority of her dough prep on Wednesdays along with a few drop offs and porch pickups, reserving Thursdays and Fridays for her bake days. Saturdays are exclusive selling days at the weekly Farmer’s Market.
When speaking to full-time baker Annie Clapper from The Family Crumb, she shared how imperative it is to schedule “you time” from baking:
Remember it’s still a business - sourdough and bread baking can get really romanticized and while it is so fun, beautiful, creative, and delicious, it’s still going to be something you are dedicating a lot of hours to. Build in periods of time you are not doing it, so you can stay in love with it.
Though it may sound counterintuitive, it’s important to schedule time off from baking to prevent burnout, stay passionate about your craft, and recharge for the week ahead.
3. Delegation
Almost every successful baker we spoke to across the US had some kind of help in the kitchen. Whether it be from members of the family or close friends - it’s important to recruit help for labeling, packaging, as well as the transport and set up of your products. Sydney Chastain receives help from her husband: “I am a work-from-home mom and my husband is off on Fridays. So on Fridays, he’s got the kids and I am in here and it has helped a ton.” Up until now she recruited the help of her little brother for the packaging, labeling, and transport of her bakes to the Farmer’s Market. Her success at the Farmer’s Market brought in enough profit to provide for her family, allowing her husband to leave his day job and join her full-time in their newly converted micro-bakery space.
Rebecca Morelock, founder of Baked Artisan Breads in Brownwood TX, hired an extra set of hands to help her with her bakes when she was baking out of her house. Since moving into her new bakery, she works with two women that help her bake and sell over 1,000 baked goods every Friday. When asked about her team, she said, “These girls have never baked before and they are insane. Jess is a better baker than I’ve ever been. Rachel is super organized and methodical about things. I could not have asked for a better crew. They run this ship.”
Whether you pay someone or they volunteer their time, it’s important to factor this into the pricing of your goods. Annie Clapper encourages bakers to “make sure you price your bread appropriately for what you want to be paid.” This means taking into account the cost of any ingredients, hired help, time, materials, and transportation needed to run your business.
4. Vendors
Do you have a current list of vendors that you work with? Or are you simply relying on Farmer’s Markets and word of mouth? To determine what the best fit for you is, figure out where you’re currently spending most of your time.. Perhaps time-consuming drop offs aren’t beneficial for your business and porch pick ups would save you time and energy. Sadee Taylor utilizes Farmer’s Markets, porch pick ups, and a partnership with a local cafe and coffee house, “We’d sell out in the first hour or two of a five hour market. And then we’d have hundreds of customers coming for my bread. So I have been filtering them out with porch pick ups.” She was hesitant and a little intimidated in the beginning but found it to be one of the best decisions she could have made for her business. She has many “pick up” clients, some who even drive up to forty minutes to purchase her bread. Her setup consists of online pre-orders for pick up, a few standing shelves, and a sign for her business.
Rebecca Morelock partners with markets, restaurants and coffee houses in town. Rebecca’s bakery is open on Fridays and then she drops off any leftovers to her local marketplace, which saves her time and only requires her to drop off at one single location. On Sundays she supplies a local restaurant with bread and croissants for their brunch menu. Take a look around, are there any local shops, markets, or cafes that you can partner with in your town? Establishing recurring orders with local businesses can add stability to your baking schedule and monthly profits.
If you find yourself constantly doing order deliveries, make sure you are aware of the hidden costs. Factor in the price of fuel, as well as the mileage that individual drop offs require of your vehicle. Take a look at how the pricing of your product can cover your monthly travel costs, and if it exceeds a reasonable price range, consider alternatives; while delivery is convenient for customers, there are still many who are willing to pick up quality baked goods.
5. Simply Bread App
A crucial piece of running a successful business is automating tasks that are monotonous and repetitive. After hearing a number of stories from bakers in our Simply Bread community, we developed an app to assist bakers like you with your business. Here are a few of the ways our app can help.
Efficient Order Management: Ditch the sticky notes and cluttered calendars. Our app tracks orders so you can stay up-to-date with pending and fulfilled orders. With this feature, you are also able to filter orders so you don’t get confused about who ordered what.
Limited Quantity Bake Days: Pick your bake days, set your desired batch quantity for that day, and let our app calculate the amount of ingredients you’ll need to fulfill it.
Simplify Customer Communication: No more searching through your phone and email for customer contacts, or copying and pasting the same message for multiple people. Now you can set up reminders and notifications for your customers that enhance your service and reduce the valuable time you spend on manual follow-ups.
Visit Simply Bread to download the app and start transforming your baking business today.
Summary
All five of these tips can help you simplify your business in no time. Whether it’s organizing your space, making lists, or staggering your tasks in a limited area, it’s essential to set the stage before you step out to perform. Once your preparations are set, determine what kind of schedule will work best for your personal life and weekly needs. Consolidating with batch organization will help you get a handle on your work-life balance. Don’t forget about delegation; running a business isn’t something you have to do alone. Whether it’s voluntary, in exchange for free bread, or through hiring an employee, there are always helping hands available. When looking for vendors, seek support in your local community. Many bakers partner with local businesses and offer porch pick ups, creating lucrative and recurring profit opportunities. Lean on Simply Bread to alleviate tiresome tasks and help streamline the business side of your baking so you can focus more on the actual production of your product. Simplifying your business doesn’t have to be hard; with the right tools and support, you can create a workflow that allows you to enjoy the journey and focus on what you love most: baking!
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