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How to Pay Yourself $1,000 a Month From Your Microbakery, Part 2 | Episode 100

  • Sep 11, 2025
  • 6 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

Listen on Apple Podcasts


Most bakers I talk to are not underpaid because nobody wants their bread. They are underpaid because every dollar that comes in goes right back out to flour, packaging, vendor fees and the next piece of equipment, and there is never a moment where anyone decides how much of it belongs to them.


My bookkeeper Megan has a line I think about all the time. If the business never pays you, it is just an expensive hobby. We are not in this for an expensive hobby. We are in this to build something that supports our households.


This is part two of the plan to pay yourself $1,000 a month, picking up where Episode 98 left off. That one covered knowing what your products actually cost and pricing for a real margin. Here we take those prices and reverse engineer them into a monthly number, a weekly number, and a bake list you can actually execute.


The formula scales, by the way. Once it works for $1,000 it works for $2,000 or $4,000. I am using $1,000 because it is a real starting point for most of us.


First, the cost per unit detail I skipped last time

When you are calculating the cost of something that makes a lot at once, you calculate the whole batch and then divide.


My chocolate chip cookie batch makes twenty 80 gram cookies. So I calculate the full cost of that batch, divide by twenty to get the cost of one cookie, then multiply by six when I sell a half dozen. Packaging goes in there too, every time.


If a batch of cookies costs $10 to make and yields 20 cookies, each one is 50 cents and a half dozen is $3 in raw ingredients and packaging before overhead, taxes or a single dollar of pay for you.


Do this for every product on your menu. A spreadsheet you build yourself works beautifully if you like spreadsheets, and some people genuinely do. My Profit and Pricing Calculator is a Google Sheets tool that does the same math if numbers make your head spin, and I will link it at the bottom.


Split your revenue into buckets before you spend it

The cash system I use comes from the book Profit First by Mike Michalowicz. I have no affiliation with it, I have just read it several times, and the audiobook is read by the author and is genuinely fun to listen to.


The idea is simple. Every dollar of revenue that comes in gets divided into separate pockets the moment it arrives, instead of sitting in one account where it all feels like yours.

  • Taxes. Set aside automatically, somewhere you cannot casually touch. This money was never yours.

  • Overhead and operating expenses. Ingredients, packaging, parchment, utilities, software subscriptions, vendor fees, equipment.

  • Savings. Rainy day money and the fund for bigger equipment later.

  • Owner's pay. Yours, on purpose, on a schedule.

  • Profit. A small separate slice, even 1 percent. It compounds, and every quarter you take half of it out as a treat or to pay down debt.

Percentages I like as a starting point: 30 to 40 percent to owner's pay, 20 to 25 percent to taxes, 10 to 15 percent to savings, and the rest to overhead. Adjust them until they suit your business. The only rule is that they add up to 100.


Now work backward from $1,000

Here is the part that makes it real. Pick your allocation, and your revenue target falls out of it.


The simple 25 percent version. Twenty five percent each to owner's pay, taxes, overhead and savings. If owner's pay is a quarter of everything and you want $1,000, your business needs to bring in $4,000 in a month. Broken into bite sized pieces, that is $1,000 a week in product sales.


The 40/20/30/10 version. Forty percent to owner's pay, 20 to taxes, 30 to overhead, 10 to savings. Now $1,000 of pay only requires $2,500 in monthly revenue: $1,000 to you, $500 to taxes, $750 to overhead, $250 to savings. That is $625 a week.


Same take-home pay, very different sales target, and the difference is entirely in how you allocate. This is worth sitting with for a minute, because it means the first lever you pull is not always baking more.


Build the product mix that gets you there

Now go back to the prices you set in part one and play with combinations until they add up to your weekly number. You do not have to sell a hundred loaves.


One way to reach $1,000 in a week:

  • 30 classic loaves at $10 is $300

  • 30 inclusion loaves at $12 is $360

  • 10 pans of focaccia at $10 is $100

  • 5 packs of a dozen cookies at $30 is $150

  • 18 cinnamon rolls at $5 is $90

The other way to do it, and the way I actually run my own numbers, is to start from the quantities you know you always sell. Mine are 40 original loaves at $400, 24 sandwich loaves at $240, and 16 pans of focaccia at $160. That is $700 before I have decided anything, and it is my ongoing reference point.


From there I only have to figure out how to fill the remaining $300. Inclusion loaves, scones, cookies, cinnamon rolls, English muffins. I know all of those prices, so filling the gap is quick.


If you are a year or three in, plan against your real capacity

At this stage the mix question gets more interesting, because you have enough products that the gap can be filled several different ways.


For my September markets I want to land between $1,800 and $2,000 per market. I start with the same $700 of staples, then I add roughly 10 packs of granola at $9, about 12 bags of crackers at $6, and around 18 packs of two scones at $6.


Then comes the honest question. When I add it up and I am still short of the target, I have to decide whether I am bumping up against my real capacity, or whether I can get creative and lean into something popular that sells fast, like English muffins. Sometimes the answer is that the number does not fit in the week I have, and knowing that in advance is far better than finding out at 11 p.m. on bake night.


That is the whole shift. Once you can see the quantities and the prices together, planning your bake stops being guesswork and becomes a decision you make on purpose.


A note on keeping it maintainable: when a supplier raises prices, you want one place to change one number and have it flow through every product. That is a spreadsheet job, whether you build it or use mine, and it is the difference between numbers you trust and numbers you last checked in the spring.


Final thoughts

There is a real difference between bakers who come and go and bakers who are still here in five years. The ones who stay know what each product costs, price for a margin that pays them, set a revenue goal, and match production to it. They still bake for fun. They just do not confuse the fun with the plan.


You do not need to bake more. You need to bake with a plan that fits your goals, your life, and the hours you actually have, because your time is the resource that is easiest to overlook.


Start with your product costs this week. Set your allocation percentages. Do the multiplication and find your weekly number. Then write the bake list that gets you there.


It feels right that this landed on episode 100. Here is to your first $1,000 month, and to the next hundred!


Cheering you on,


Caroline


Keep going

If you want to keep going on the money side, start with part one and then these two.


Links to things you might like!


 
 
 
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