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How to Add Sourdough Workshops to Your Microbakery | Episode 29

Nov 12, 2024
7 min read

Updated: Aug 13

Listen on Apple Podcasts


You bake seventy five loaves for a market, you load the car, you stand on your feet all day, and at the end of it you have made a certain amount of money. There is a hard limit on that number, and the limit is your hands and your oven.


Teaching is one of the few things a microbakery can sell that does not have that limit. My guest Kala Hembree has taught 1,804 people to bake bread since February of 2023, across more than sixty classes, while raising two small kids and running markets and weekly pickups at the same time.


Kala runs The Bread House in Mobile, Alabama, and she was a classroom teacher for seven years before she came home with her babies. Here is how she built the teaching side, and what you can take from it.


Why a class beats another market day on the math

Kala is direct about the money, and I love her for it. She can make significantly more money with a lot less work by teaching a class than by baking seventy five loaves for a farmer's market. A class means prepping a few loaves and bulking up her starter, and a market means every loaf, every package, every hour on your feet. That matters most when your time is the scarce thing, and Kala needed to stay home with her children.


The second reason is the one that surprised her. Selling someone bread is a two minute interaction, especially when there is a line behind them. A class is three hours together. People hear her story, she hears theirs, and those relationships turn into customers who buy from her every week even after they know how to bake it themselves.


You do not need to be the biggest baker in town to teach

This is the objection I hear most, and Kala's answer is worth reading twice. You do not have to be the farmer's market baker or bake in big quantities to have the standing to teach.


What she does think you need is a little visible proof. In her early days the people signing up were not her friends and family. They were market customers who had already bought her bread and wanted to make it at home. Showing up at a market with a beautiful loaf and a photo of yourself holding it is what tells people you know what you are doing.


Now she teaches more classes in a week than she bakes bread, because she followed the demand that was bigger.


The change that filled her classes

Kala started out doing private bookings, driving to your house or your church or your office to teach your group. It worked, and it capped her.


Then the messages started coming in from women who wanted to come but did not want to host. So she found a neutral venue she could return to and started running open classes anyone could sign up for. That is when it broke open, with waitlists and classes filling before she could promote them.


She uses her husband's office training room for free, which she is the first to say is a blessing not everyone has. The point still holds for you:

  • Find a space you can use consistently, so students book a class instead of hosting one. A church hall or a neighborhood community center is often cheap or free.

  • Be careful with venue fees. A four or five hundred dollar facility fee eats your profit fast, and Kala only pays one when the math clearly works.

  • About ninety percent of her classes are open ones she hosts herself.


She has not spent a cent on marketing

Not one dollar. Here is what actually built it.


Her Facebook group, not a page, is the heart of her business, and it has grown to close to four thousand people. She built it with a QR code and a sign at her market table saying to follow along for the schedule. When she decided to start teaching, she posted one graphic to that group, and it got shared.


Then she asked. After those first classes she asked the women, if you enjoyed this and you are a sharer, would you post about it. That is what took it from a nice idea to a booked calendar.


And she kept going when it was slow. A sourdough class early on had only three signups and she was a little deflated. She taught those three with her whole heart, and one of them happened to have a big social media following. That woman shared the class, and Kala has not had a sourdough class under twenty people since!


Marketing people say someone has to see a thing six or seven times to remember it, and ten or twelve times before they act. Kala has had students walk in and say they had been watching her for two years. Keep offering it.


What to charge

Kala's sourdough class is seventy dollars, and she says that is the floor. She can hold that price because she comfortably teaches twenty to thirty people at a time and does not pay a venue fee. If she were paying for the space or teaching smaller groups, she would raise it.


Her method is the one I would use too. Decide what you want to earn per hour, count the hours the class actually takes, and work backwards to the price. That hour count is bigger than people think. Her prep starts on Wednesday and finishes on Saturday, and by the end there are around twenty hours in it.


Two more things worth stealing:

  • She keeps it under a hundred dollars on purpose, because a three digit number puts people in a different frame of mind. She could charge eighty or ninety and still fill the room, and she has chosen to keep it reachable for the moms in her community learning this out of necessity.

  • She runs a small supply store on the side. Baskets, bread kits, lames, bench scrapers, slings, bought in bulk and marked up. She tells students straight out that parchment paper, a razor blade and a Dutch oven will do the job, and lets them decide how much to invest. It is real profit for very little extra work, and there is nowhere else local to buy those things.

At seventy dollars, students go home with four printed pages, a jar of starter, and her contact information. She expects them to reach out in the days after, and about half of a class of twenty does.


If you are already running classes, hire a helper

This is the part I want the more established bakers to hear. Kala calls hiring her assistant Madison the change that made the business possible, and Madison did not know how to bake anything when she started.


What you need is a hostess. Someone kind who can talk to people, wash dishes while class is running, slice bread while you answer questions, and greet the students who arrive thirty minutes early because they are excited. It costs you a slice of the profit on every class and it buys back the whole experience.


Her other hard-won tips: practice a full run through with a friend who will ask you questions, cap the starter conversation with a timer or it will eat your class, and hand out the printed recipes at the end so people stay present. She also clogged a sink at a very nice wedding venue once and paid the plumber, so put baby wipes at every station.


What about creating competition?

Kala's husband asked her this before her very first class. Of the 1,804 people she has taught, about seven have started selling, and all but one came to her first and asked if it was alright. Her only request is that they do not sell at her market.


She has watched those bakers send students back to her, and the one person who did not ask fizzled out within a couple of weeks. I have had the same experience. My own assistant first met me at a workshop and is now dipping a toe into selling in her neighborhood, and I told her to go for it. I cannot bake for everyone who wants bread, and neither can you.


Final thoughts

What I keep coming back to is that Kala started in a thousand square foot trailer with a one year old and a four year old and a very small kitchen. It was not a good time to start a business. She started anyway, kept showing up, and now teaching is the most profitable thing she does.


If a workshop has been sitting on your list, pick a date, find a room you can use twice, and put it in front of the people who already buy your bread. You know enough to teach what you know.


Cheering you on,


Caroline


Keep going

If this one got you thinking, these three go well with it.


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