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How to Get Local Customers: Pop-Ups, Signs and Word of Mouth | Episode 70

  • Mar 20, 2025
  • 7 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

Listen on Apple Podcasts or watch on YouTube


You can bake the best bread in your town and still have a very quiet order form, because the people who would happily buy from you have no idea you exist.


That is the problem Kayce Boksa of Trails End Breads and Blooms solved first, and it is why her bakery outside Chicago went from five loaves a week to a maximum bake of 72 in about a year. She did it in the suburbs, as a self-described introvert with serious imposter syndrome, mostly without spending money on advertising. Everything below is hers, and all of it is stealable.


Start with the sign at the end of your driveway

Kayce lives in a neighborhood of about 500 homes with a lot of people out walking. Another mom in the neighborhood runs an Etsy business making signs, so Kayce asked her to turn her bakery logo into a mailbox sign.


At first she only hung it out during pickup windows. Then she decided to leave it up all the time.


When she polled her customers a couple of months before we talked, about half of them said they found her because of that sign.


One of my favorite stories from our conversation is the woman who had just moved into the neighborhood, went looking for a local bakery, found Kayce through a Google search, and then realized she recognized the name from the mailbox she walked past all the time. That is what a sign does. It makes you familiar before anyone is ready to buy.


I have heard the number of touches a person needs before a buying decision put anywhere from 7 to 21. Your logo on a sign, your name in a Facebook thread, your face at a shop, they all count. Stack them up.


Nobody markets your bakery for you

Kayce said something in this interview that I want printed on a card for every baker who is about to launch.


She sees people in bakery groups announce that they just set up Hotplate and then ask how to get the word out. Her answer is that Hotplate is not going to get the word out for you. An order platform is wonderful for holding and serving the customers you already have. It does zero advertising on your behalf.


You are the marketing department. That is not a punishment, it just means the work of being findable is yours to do.


For Kayce that meant being a real person in her local moms Facebook group for eight years before she ever had bread to sell. She had sold her kids' old clothes in there, talked about restaurants, been genuinely present. When she launched, the group already knew her, so it was well received.


Two retired neighbors turned up at one of her first pop-ups purely because they had seen the mailbox sign, then saw her post on Facebook, and wanted to meet her. That is two channels working together on one customer.


Why she chose pop-ups over farmers markets

Kayce does pop-ups inside local shops rather than outdoor markets, and her reasons are practical.

  • They are indoors and air conditioned. Chicago humidity, thunderstorms and miserable hot days do not cancel her day.

  • They suit her personality. Big markets with dozens of vendors feel like chaos to her, and a small shop does not.

  • They give her a monthly rhythm at the same shops, so customers know where to find her.

Here is the part I want you to copy exactly. Kayce structures a pop-up so the shop wins too. She takes a set number of pre-orders for pickup at the shop, which walks her customers through that shop's front door, and then she bakes extra inventory to sell to the shop's own customers. Because she is bringing them business, the shops do not charge her for the space.


That framing is also exactly how she pitches it. She sends an Instagram or Facebook message, introduces herself, explains that she brings her own customers plus extra inventory, and offers to stop by with some really good bread so they can talk about it.


Pick shops your ideal customer already shops at

Not every shop is a fit, and Kayce is deliberate about this.


One of her regular hosts is a farmhouse-style shop in her own town with a little kitchen section where her display fits beautifully. The other is a sustainable shop in a nearby town that sells non-toxic alternatives to everyday home products. She bakes with organic flour, and someone who reads the label on their cleaning spray tends to read the label on their bread.


She also genuinely shops at both. She buys things there, she posts about them, she means it. Her rule is that she would never set up at a place she would not shop at herself, because people can feel when a partnership is fake.


And she expects to hear no. She has messaged shops and gotten a no, or gotten no reply at all, and she is fine with that. Her reasoning is good: if she has to talk a shop into hosting her, they do not really believe in her product, and that pop-up was never going to work anyway.


The distance test

This is the strategic point that separates a good sales day from actual growth.


Kayce did a smaller market in the town north of her last summer and sold out every single time. Fantastic day. But that market was about 25 minutes from her house, and her business runs on Friday porch pickups at her home. Those customers were realistically never going to drive down to her.


So she stopped. A successful market that produces zero repeat customers is a day of work, not a growth channel.


Ask this before you commit to any market or pop-up: will the people who buy from me here actually order from me again the way I want to be ordered from? If the honest answer is no, let another baker serve that town. As Kayce put it, there are thousands of people and her max is 72 loaves. There is plenty for everyone.


Match the format to the event

Kayce got invited to a wine walk and started planning a full pop-up with bread, scones and cookies. Then she pictured it properly: women walking around town holding a glass of wine are not going to carry a big heavy bread bag with them.


So she brought samples instead. No product for sale, just a taste, a card, and a clear explanation of how to order and where she is on Fridays. She offers her cookies baked or frozen as a take-and-bake, which people love hearing about.


She does the same thing with giving, dropping sliced loaves and cinnamon honey butter off at her sons' school for the teachers. Maybe those teachers never order. They will still mention her to someone.


For the operator a year or two in

Once you have tried enough things, the work shifts from getting out there to cutting what does not pay.


Kayce is now going back to the two shops where she has had the most success and asking for a consistent, exclusive spot: first Saturday of every month at one, a regular weekday market at the other. That way the shop owner has an answer when someone asks when Trails End will be back. She also learned that evening markets do not work for her, because you are left holding unsold bread at seven in the evening and tomorrow it is day-old.


The habit underneath all of this is that she keeps a journal. She already tracked measurements and timing for every bake, so she started doing the same for every pop-up: how much she sold, what worked, what she liked, what she would change. That record is what let her make these calls with confidence instead of a feeling.


Her line on it is the one I would underline. You can treat this as a hobby or as a business, and you have to treat it like a business for it to grow.


The confidence question

I asked Kayce how an introvert finds the nerve to walk into shops and pitch herself, and her answer was that she has zero confidence and serious imposter syndrome and does it anyway.


What changed things was getting outside her own bubble. Once strangers started ordering, and then ordering again, she could no longer explain it away as friends being nice to her.


She grew at the pace her systems could handle, too. One dough bin, then a second, then a third, as demand showed up.


If you are stuck before the ask, her advice is to prepare yourself for the no ahead of time. Rehearsing all the ways it could go badly means living it twice.


Final thoughts

Your community cannot support a bakery it does not know about. Put your name somewhere people will see it every week, be a real presence in the places your neighbors already gather, and go make friends with the shop owners down the street.


Then watch what happens and write it down, so that a year from now you are not guessing which of it worked.


Go shoot your shot, friend. The worst anyone can say is no!


Cheering you on,


Caroline


Keep going

If you want more on getting found in your own town, start with these.


Links to things you might like!


 
 
 

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