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How to Reset Your Microbakery After the Holiday Rush | Episode 49

  • 2 days ago
  • 6 min read

Listen on Apple Podcasts or watch on YouTube


The first week of January in a microbakery is a strange one. You are still finding flour in odd places, your body is tired in a way that sleep does not quite fix, and you have a vague sense that December went well without being able to say exactly why.


Most bakers do one of two things here. They sprint straight into January with a list of new offerings, or they avoid the whole subject because looking at the holiday season too closely feels like it might hurt.


There is a better move, and it takes about an hour. Rest first, look back at December honestly, then change your calendar based on what you find. Here is how I did it, numbers and mistakes included.


Rest before you plan anything

I took two full weeks off. I did not publish podcast episodes the week of Christmas or the week of New Year's, my last bake day of the year was the Thursday before Christmas, and after that I went into full vacation mode with my family.


I want to be clear that this was a business decision and not a treat. Every plan I have ever made while exhausted has been either too ambitious or too small, and both of those cost money.


That quiet week between Christmas and New Year's is also when I finally cleared out our detached garage and made myself an actual office space. I came into January feeling clear instead of frantic.


Look at December with the numbers in front of you

Here is what my December actually looked like. I ran porch pickups on the first three Thursdays and my regular market on the second Saturday. At that market I brought 101 loaves plus cookies, scones and a few cookie gift boxes, and I sold everything but one loaf. The gift boxes were gone in about twenty minutes.


For the final holiday bake day I offered around three thousand dollars worth of product, the most I have ever put out at once, and I sold a little over half of it. My marketing effort was maybe fifty percent of what it could have been, one post in a local Facebook group and one or two on my bakery accounts.


Now here is the part that matters. As my assistant and I were packing that day, I said out loud that I was so glad I had not sold all of it, because what we were already doing was nearly too much. If I had pushed the marketing and sold the full three thousand, the day would have broken us.


So when you sit down with your own December, look for these:

  • What sold out fastest, and did you bring enough of it? That is your demand signal for next year.

  • What did not move, and is it worth the labor to make again?

  • Where did the day nearly come apart? That is your real constraint, and it is usually labor or oven space, not demand.

  • What did customers thank you for by name? Two or three of mine texted afterward about the gift boxes, and that told me exactly what to build on.


The prep mistakes worth fixing before next holiday

Three specific things went wrong for me, and all three were fixable in advance.


I kept my normal 11:00 pickup start time for the biggest bake day of the year. For Thanksgiving I had pushed pickup back by a couple of hours to give us margin, and for Christmas I just did not, for no good reason. We made it, the first orders were bagged and on the porch at 10:58, but there was no breathing room at all. For every future holiday pre-order I give myself the extra time.


I also learned something about the freezer that changed my planning. Dough that sits frozen much longer than about ten days starts to lose leavening power. My Thanksgiving dinner rolls had been frozen longer than that and the rise was disappointing. Nobody complained and they tasted fine, but I did not feel great about selling them, and I do not want to sell anything I am not fully proud of. So the answer is not to stop using the freezer, it is to use it inside that ten day window.


And then the small one that stung the most. I mixed the cinnamon roll glaze the morning of pickup. It took ten minutes, which sounds like nothing, but it was ten minutes I did not have on the busiest morning of the year. Labels, packaging, dry ingredients, glaze, anything that can sit in a container for a few days should be done the week before.


Change your calendar, not just your effort

The biggest change I made for January was structural. Instead of running porch pickups every single Thursday, I moved them to the weeks opposite my markets, which meant dropping two pickups a month.


That sounds like less business. It is actually more, and here is why. On the weeks where I had a Thursday pickup and a Saturday market, I was mixing Saturday's dough while getting Thursday's orders out the door, and both offerings had to shrink to fit. Separating them means I can offer a much wider variety at each one, large boxes of muffins and more bread flavors at pickup, and more of the supplemental items at market like ciabatta, par-baked pizza crusts and sweets.


Those supplemental items are the ones that drive up the average order value. Somebody comes for two loaves and leaves with two loaves and a box of cookies. When my calendar was too tight to make them, I was leaving that money on the table every other week.


If your holiday season nearly broke you, look at your calendar before you look at your marketing. Spreading the same work over a schedule that fits usually earns more than working harder inside a schedule that does not.


One goal you can say in a sentence

My goal that year was to be the baker in my immediate community. Not my city, not my county, my narrow little community. When people around me think sourdough, I want them to think of my bakery.


That kind of goal is useful because it tells you what to do on a Tuesday. It meant a real social media calendar with one or two posts a week, a pace I can hold, rather than daily posting I would abandon by February. It meant looking after my loyal customers on purpose and rewarding the ones who send friends my way with a discount code or something extra in the bag.


Pick one sentence like that for your own year. Vague goals like "grow" cannot tell you what to do this week.


If you are a few years in, start here

A couple of projects separate a bakery that can grow from one that just gets busier.


Get your numbers out of the fog. Know what each product actually costs you to make and what your margin is on it. I decided not to raise prices on my standard loaves, because a new product launch is a much easier place to set a price. When you introduce a new flavor of scone or muffin, price it slightly higher than feels comfortable and let it sit there. My proof of this is a tray of four cinnamon rolls I priced at $20. It felt high to me, I planned to drop it by two dollars for Thanksgiving pre-orders, I forgot, and twenty to thirty trays sold in well under an hour. The right customers do not flinch at a price that matches the value!


Then get your processes out of your head. Right now, if your assistant hits something she has not done before, the answer probably lives only in your brain. Write down every process, one at a time, as you do it. That is the thing that lets you hand work off later, and the problem only grows with the business.


While you are at it, keep an equipment fund in savings. My bakery fridge upgrade landed months earlier than planned, and the only reason that was exciting instead of stressful is that the money was already sitting there.


Final thoughts

A month in review is not a report card. It is you sitting down with a cup of coffee and asking what actually happened, so that next December costs you less and pays you more. December taught me that my demand was fine and my calendar was the problem, and that one realization changed my whole year.


Take the rest first. Then get honest about the numbers. Then move one thing on the calendar.


Cheering you on,


Caroline


Keep going

If you are in planning mode, start with these.


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