How to Bring Your Bakery Business Dream to Life

Introduction

Have you wanted to open up your own bakery for a long time?

You’ve probably thought over the way you’d like to decorate it, and come up with a play on words that would be perfect as a name. You’ve probably got ideas for a menu to offer as well, and you’ve had countless friends over the years let you know just how good your signature cakes and buns are.

If that’s the kind of situation you find yourself in right now, why not finally jump at the chance to make your bakery business dream a reality? You can bring it to life with a bit of careful planning, some time on your side, and with the help of the tips we’ve included down below.

After all, bakeries are great little businesses for serving the local community. Make a good name for yourself amongst your neighbors and you’re likely to get the opportunity to take your bakery nationwide as well.

Of course, a lot of hard work needs to be put in first, but this is the kind of goal you could very well reach for! So let’s make your bakery dreams seem much more lifelike; if you’ve got the passion, there’s plenty you can do next to find success.

How to Start a Bakery Business

Get a Portfolio Together

This is the first thing for bringing your baking business to life. A portfolio that you can upload to your own website, as well as share on social media, will make it much easier to showcase your skill.

Interested potential customers will then be able to immediately see what they’re about to order and/or buy.

You should also routinely update this portfolio to include your best, and most diverse pieces. Make it easy for anyone clicking on your link to see how far your skill stretches, as well as display the new skills you’ve acquired along the way.

You can arrange this portfolio in any way you like, so be sure to pop a bit of your own creativity into what you’re showing. Include descriptions of the goods in each photo as well.

Break Down the Budget

So, what’s it going to cost to run a bakery business?

It’s a little different for every bakery owner out there, but you’ll be able to put together a projected budget from the get go. After all, you know the kinds of things you’ll need to buy and/or pay for on a regular basis already, especially if you’ve been baking for a long time.

You’re going to need to keep your ingredients topped up, for one. Work out the bulk cost of this week by week, and how long your supplies are likely to last based on what you plan to offer.

Someone who works per order will be able to price their ingredients per project, but someone who wants to run a traditional bakery will need to determine the cost per day.

For example, say you’re going to bake 100 cupcakes each day, and then offer four big cakes that customers can buy slices of. What will it cost to supply your bakery for a week on this production schedule?

Remember, you’ll be able to get multiple batches of 12-24 cakes out of one bag of flour or one pot of baking powder, so it may be easier to start with the batch amounts per week before thinking about the cost.

You’ll then need to think about other overheads like electricity, heating, and gas. If you use a stove to bake any of the products on your menu, the bill for the latter may be higher than average for the businesses in your area.

Also read: 8 Ways to Grow Your Small Business

Understand Food Safety Rules

Bakeries don’t just have to keep their kitchens clean. It’s a little more complicated than that, so be sure to read up on food safety rules and read up regularly! We can include a very quick general breakdown below, but it’s crucial to do research into the guidelines that apply to the kind of bakery you’re planning to run.

Any and all food and beverage manufacturers are subject to guidelines like the BRCGS for Food Safety Issue 9, and the owner of the operation is the one responsible for maintaining these standards within the workplace.

Your bakery business is likely to also fall under these guidelines if you make goods on site, and especially if you use ingredients that have also been grown and cultivated on site.

Indeed, many smaller baking companies aim to use local ingredients that come from the same area, but some also like to cut costs by producing ingredients like their own flour, baking mixes, and herbs and spices. If you have ideas along these lines, be sure to do your research into these expanded food safety requirements that you could easily fall under with.

Of course, standard hygiene practices will apply across the board. This includes having two sinks within your production area to ensure hands can be washed in a separate basin, and ensuring all ingredients are kept in clean containers that are labelled with expiry dates.

The packaging you use will fall under these rules too. In the food industry, it’s incredibly important to ensure the consumer has all the information they need to make informed dietary decisions. As such, allergens need to be displayed very clearly on things made in-house, which have then been wrapped for freshness to allow customers to buy and take away.

Find the Perfect Premises

Paying for the perfect premises will be another cost on your bakery budget. Rent per month may run higher, as you’re likely to need extra space for cooking equipment and temperature controlled display cabinets.

Accounting for rent costs often makes up the biggest part of the bakery pricing structure; make sure you factor this into the cost of the goods, even while you ensure the cost is fair to the customer.

To try and keep these costs low, be sure to go for a space that isn’t too sizable, but still allows you to grow your equipment and storage over the next year or so. You don’t want to have to move too soon, but you also don’t want to pay for something too large that you can’t quite afford.

And there’s another thing you should keep in mind: the perfect premises could even be your own home. If you’ve got the space to turn your kitchen into a commercial production area, you might not have to fork out for the extra overheads that come with renting or buying a separate commercial kitchen.

Bakery posts on social media tend to do quite well. People love to see cakes being brought to life, and there’s a big trend right now in creating hyper realistic cakes.

If you have this level of skill and don’t mind sharing it with the world, you could drive engagement by asking viewers to guess whether the item in the video is ‘real or cake?’

But those aren’t the only kinds of posts that can bring more views, follows, and happy customers to your pages. Simply sharing the baking process with your online viewership can bring a lot of interested clicks your way, especially if you link straight to your website from your posts and/or profile page.

People love to see how baked goods are made, and if you offer tutorials to make some items at home, you could build quite the loyal following.

Plus, if these followers can then click through and find a well made website, complete with a full portfolio and pricing list, they’re ten times more likely to send you an inquiry. Even if it doesn’t lead to a sale in the end, this is a sign your conversion process is actually working.

Also read: How to Brand Your Business on a Budget

Got a Bakery Business Dream? You Can Bring it to Life

Running your own bakery is a noble business goal, but be sure to take your formation at a steady pace. You don’t want to over budget yourself from the beginning, and that can be more easily done in this industry than any other.

After all, buying up commercial space is costly, and a baker who isn’t sure of the exact dimensions required can pay for a much bigger space than they need to!

Plus, there’s likely a lot of research you need to do. You’ll need to look into how well bakeries perform in your area, what baked goods are most popular, and how you can brand yourself with a USP that really works.

Of course, if you’ve been baking for a while and have plenty of ‘happy customers’ already, you’ll have a great advantage on that word by mouth angle every food business needs!

But above all, don’t lose your passion for baking by going into business. The admin involved in running a company can quite quickly run your love for the craft into the ground, so be sure to reach out for help when you need it.