top of page
Search

Are Sourdough Workshops Worth It? My January Revenue Recap | Episode 117

  • Feb 12
  • 7 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

Listen on Apple Podcasts or watch on YouTube


Most of us close out a month by glancing at the bank balance for four seconds and then starting the next one at a dead run. The bread got baked, the orders went out, and whatever that month was trying to teach us slides right off the table.


I sit down with the previous month at the start of every new one, and that single habit has shaped my decisions more than anything else I do in this business. It is not a big spreadsheet audit. It is a clear look at what sold, what dragged, and what I want to carry forward.


January was a good month for me, and it was good in ways I would have missed if I had not stopped to look. Here is what it showed me, and how you can run the same look at your own bakery.


Look at the trend, not the total

January came in higher than December, and December came in higher than November. November was the month I moved out of my home kitchen and opened the doors of my brick and mortar, so that whole stretch has been one long learning curve.


That upward line matters more to me than any single month's number. December is usually strong for bakers because of gifting and seasonal demand, so a January that beats it tells me the baseline is strengthening and the demand is steady instead of holiday-shaped.


One month on its own will lie to you. Three months in a row will tell you the truth. When you sit down with your own numbers, look at these:

  • Total revenue for the last three months side by side, in that order.

  • Which revenue stream grew, and whether that growth was seasonal or real.

  • Your top five products by units sold, not by how much you enjoy making them.

  • How many customers placed a first order.


Workshops brought in about a quarter of my January revenue

That number stopped me. Workshops made up roughly a quarter of everything I sold in January, because I put January and February classes on sale in early January after selling almost no tickets in December.


Workshops are not a fun add-on to squeeze in when the week is slow. They are a real revenue stream, and they are the warmest marketing you will ever do, because people leave your kitchen having touched your dough and met you.


If you have been thinking about teaching and have not started, here is your sign!

  • Teach beginner sourdough first. It is the class people want most and the one you already know cold.

  • Start small. A few friends around your table on a weeknight is a real workshop.

  • Price it as revenue, not as a favor. Calculate the cost of your ingredients and your hours, then set a number that pays you properly.

  • Plan the second class. People will not take beginner twice, so croissants, scones, or English muffins are how you turn one-time students into repeat students.


A predictable core menu is doing more work than you think

My top sellers in January were exactly the ones I hoped for. Sandwich bread and original loaves lead, followed closely by focaccia, English muffins, cinnamon rolls, muffins, and pizza crusts. Cookies sell too, usually as an impulse buy or for an event.


No surprises at all, and that is the win! Those are repeat-buy items that people build their week around. They are choosing my bread over the grocery store bread, over and over, because they know it will be there.


I rotate seasonal items in to keep things interesting, but I am not rebuilding the menu every week. From an operations standpoint that matters more than I realized until the last few months, because it means fewer surprises and a menu that feels intentional instead of reactive.


My customers have learned the rhythm too. If they want pizza crust, they order for Thursday. Cinnamon rolls, Saturday. There is no guesswork on either side of the counter, and I walked through exactly how I build that rotation in How I'm Planning My Weekly Menu in My Sourdough Microbakery in 2026 | Episode 115.


What I do when the weather takes my market day

January threw two weather curveballs at me, and both turned out fine because of a few simple posts.


The first market was not officially canceled, but the forecast was cold and wet and windy, and I was shorthanded enough to only be in one place. So instead of guessing, I asked. I posted the situation and asked whether I should be at the market or at the bakery, and the answer was overwhelmingly the bakery.


My booth fee was already paid with no refund, so I put a sign where my booth would have been saying we were cozy and warm with fresh bread inside. I set a keyword on my text platform so people could text for the address, and I posted three times the evening before. The result was fantastic walk-in traffic and a lot of new faces, which beat sitting frozen at a slow booth all morning.


The second market was canceled outright for ice. Down here in Texas people panic buy at the hint of ice, so I photographed the bare bread shelf at the grocery store, put it next to my full bread rack, and said the grocery store might not have bread but we do. Most people came Friday, so I baked Saturday's prep on Friday, sold out by midday Saturday, and went home before it froze.


Here is what I took from it:

  • Post more than once. The algorithm will not show everyone your first update, and three posts the night before is not too many.

  • Use Facebook even if you do not personally like it. That question got twenty or thirty comments from my actual local customers, while the same post on Instagram got a handful, some from people not even in my state.

  • Set Instagram to post automatically to Facebook so this costs you nothing extra.

  • A sign, a text keyword, and a clear photo can move a whole market crowd into your bakery.


The walk-in guessing game, and why pre-orders fix it

The hardest part of the brick and mortar has been deciding how much to bake for walk-ins, and there were plenty of days I baked too much and had to figure out what to do with the extra.


So I am leaning less on walk-ins and harder on pre-orders. They give me clarity, they remove the guesswork, and they let me bake with intention. Toward the end of January I had three days in a row where I baked exactly the right amount and sold out just before closing, which told me my instincts are finally catching up to the data.


Right now my split is close to even. On Thursdays and Fridays, baking about forty percent above my pre-order count lands me in the ballpark for walk-ins. Saturdays behave differently, with low pre-orders and much higher foot traffic.


If you bake fully on pre-order from home, none of this guesswork is your problem, and that is one of the real gifts of baking that way. If you run a roadside stand or a shop, the fastest way to take the pressure down is to move a bigger share of your bakes into pre-orders. When I post a sold-out rack in stories, I always add that a pre-order gets a loaf set aside with your name on it, and I include my sign-up link. That one line has grown my text list steadily.


If you are one to three years in, run this audit

You are past the question of whether people want your bread. The question now is which part of the business deserves more of you.

  • Split last quarter's revenue by stream: retail bakes, wholesale, markets, workshops. Which one grew without you pushing it?

  • Add up what you threw away or discounted last month. That number is your walk-in bake rate telling you it is too high.

  • Count how many products are core, rotating, or seasonal. If everything is a special, your prep day is paying for it.

  • Give your next open evening to the one stream with room to grow. For me in February, that is March and April workshops.

I added one new cookie in January, and only because it fit inside my existing workflow. I can prep it ahead and bake it from frozen, so it added almost nothing to my week. Menu discipline does not mean nothing new ever again. It means new things have to earn their way in.


Final thoughts

Here is the question I want you to sit with after a month closes: what did this month teach you about your bakery that you do not want to ignore?


It might be something about your menu, your energy, or your customers. You may not have the capacity to act on it right now, and that is fine. Write it down anyway so it is waiting for you when you do. The most useful answers arrive gently, and they are easy to miss if we never stop to ask.


Cheering you on,


Caroline


Keep going

If this was useful, these three will keep you moving.


Links to things you might like!


 
 
 

Comments

bottom of page