Passion for baking is enough to start a bakery. But more is needed to run one. Let’s understand How Does a Bakery Expert Run Successful Bakeries in the US?
You’ll need management skills, marketing mastery, and the resilience not to fail every day.
A bakery expert needs more than a perfect recipe for a croissant. A bakery expert must deal with early morning chores, crowded and empty stores, staff management hurdles, and inflation, which increase raw material costs.
But there are good practices to help you cut through all these troubles. Here’s an article to help you get through all those difficulties.
Rent & Overhead
Don’t let your bakery space rent and overhead costs kill your dream bakery. Small bakery businesses usually rely on foot traffic and the people passing by the street to maintain customer flow. But, if your place is in the far recesses of the city, you’ll miss out on the most important thing – the foot traffic.
But, if you consider a crowded area, the rental for your store location starts to go up. So, keeping your rental and overhead costs in check is crucial before penning down the documents.
When you choose a location for your bakery business, walk around and look for the places that’d fit your best interests. Once you have settled on a location, you can research the area and negotiate the lease to ensure an overhead cost that is as low as possible.
A small bakery business should spend as little as possible on their overhead costs for more profit. The overhead expenses are the expenses except for the inventory and the staffing.
Even when you aren’t making money from your bakery, you’ll still have to pay for the overhead costs. These may include rent, mortgage, utilities, insurance, and internet. Some of these expenses are fixed, while some are variable.
Even if you have been running the business for quite a while, keep checking your overhead costs seeing if something unnecessary is hurting your profits.
Licenses & Permits
Here’s one advice for every expert baker who’s ready to launch a shop –
To start a business in the USA, you must prepare permits, licenses, and legal documents. This must be done in compliance with the federal, state, and local government.
You’ll have to take a food handler’s permit, business license, employer identification number, resale permit, food handler’s permit, building health permit, dumpster placement permit, building health permit, food service license, sign permit, assumed business name DBA, and the certificate of occupancy.
Your business essentially needs all the above-mentioned licenses and permits. However, the requirements might change across states. Plus, your local government may have specific regulations that only an experienced lawyer understands.
Hire & Train Employees
Once that door starts hanging the “Open” sign, customers will be rushing in for the morning bakes. But only your bakers, kitchen staff, dishwashers, and managers can prepare that for your customers. So, you’ll have to hire the staff first.
Well, it doesn’t stop there. You must train them, starting with the etiquette of your store, up to nailing the sourdough loaves. Sometimes, they’ll have to show up early in the morning to prepare the food for the customers.
But, if you have an experienced baker to train them, this can become a beautiful community. The junior bakers and staff want to learn from the experts. There’s nothing best for your store if you are the one.
The trickiest part lies in keeping your staff motivated. It doesn’t hurt to pay them a wage below the average in your locality.
Treat them well so that they feel comfortable striving with you and becoming part of the community. Good pay (enough to maintain a living in your area) and basic employee benefits (health insurance) build the base to help you continue the business.
You want the staff to feel engaged and appreciated if you will retain them. Start by providing your employees with training, career development, and a decent pathway into their careers.
Track Cost & Revenue
It’s wonderful how you shift from being the best baker to managing employees, engaging with customers, and handling the revenue. There’s much to handle when you trace the transition from baking to a business.
When you check out the revenue, you end up analyzing the cost of the sugar, flour, and other ingredients. Flour and sugar are cheaper. But the hours and the labor that went into baking something isn’t. That’s where it’s difficult to pluck the profit out of your investment.
So, to boost profit, you must think of supplements. Coffee has long been a neighbor to baked goods. Bakers provide coffee beverages to supplement their revenue. A healthy practice by many small local bakeries is through a partnership with local roasters.
They sell their coffee from the bakery while having some of the baked goods showcased at the coffee storefront.
But math can solve some of these problems. You can check your inventory data and POS to analyze your daily, monthly, and weekly food expenses. Analyze the costs to backtrack your overspending. Some of the reasons for a shortfall in your profit are economic instability, inflation, and the like.
More traditional ways to reduce these challenges lie in cutting additional costs, reengineering your menu, and cutting down unnecessary products from your menu. You can also raise the pricing if it is required.
Market Your Bakery & Attract New Customers
Keeping your bakery storefront clean and cool?
That’s fine. But what about your Google Business listing, social media pages, and bakery website?
Businesses are online now, and your customers love to read about your business before even setting foot on your doorstep.
Marketing your bakery business is just as important as it is for you to bake the best cakes. Do publish all your delicious goodies on your social media platforms like Instagram and your bakery website. Your bakery deserves all the attention your customers can give. So, be strong on marketing and do a huge part of it on the internet.
Instagram and TikTok have enough visual space for your business to steal the show. Use them wisely and have social media experts work with you. You can also try email marketing, catering, and event sponsorship to get the most out of your marketing.
Take one step at a time and one strategy after another. If you mix all your efforts up, it’ll be difficult to measure your ROI. Most importantly, you won’t get the best of your efforts. Plus, you’ll have a mixed result of what worked and what didn’t.
Bakery Interior
What type of design are you going with? When setting up a small bakery, don’t just focus on building a store, but on building a brand.
Your storefront, design, and atmosphere are a part of your brand, as are your store logo, website theme, and social media presence.
There are many types of design to consider when choosing a design. Some are rustic, while some have an open kitchen.
But whichever design you go with, keep your cake fridges and pastry cases spotless and clean. Plan your bakery floor logically and make it clutter-free so your customers can order easily.
Take Professional Services
For a bakery expert, it’s difficult to handle everything. It starts with managing everything from the storefront to managing employee payrolls, tracking performances, and more. Usually, small bakeries employ a general manager to handle accounting, scheduling, and the like.
A lot of these jobs don’t require full-time employment. So, you can go for part-time professional services. Start by prioritizing where you need full-time employment and take help from professional services where you don’t.
Initially, the marketing can be headed by a social media or marketing expert. You can also get help from a trusted accountant for the tax season requirements. But initially, it would be an overkill to put a man in every possible seat you can imagine.
Tech & Equipment
You’ll need to buy enough bakery tools and equipment to start your business from scratch. But, if you are taking over an old bakery, then that part of the expense will be comparatively less.
For the equipment, you’ll need cooling racks, small wares, pastry cases, racks, dough sheets, and ovens. Plus, you’ll need a computer, internet, and other tech equipment for strategy, management, and the like.
Conclusion
Bakeries are hard to run, but the joy of running a successful bakery is worth more than anything. But, even as an expert baker, be mindful of who you are and what you are up against. Try staying ahead in your game by taking your marketing initiatives to the next level. Use the latest technologies, tools, and trends in the market to lead the industry from the front row and future-proof your small store. Read Small Business Journal for further help.
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