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How to Scale Your Microbakery Without Baking Until 2am | Episode 38

  • Nov 18, 2024
  • 6 min read

Updated: 4 days ago

Listen on Apple Podcasts


Danica of Deere Creek Bakery sold out at her first farmers market in three hours. She brought 18 loaves, 30 soup bowls, 15 cinnamon rolls and 48 babka muffins, and came home with an empty table and 24 new names on her text list.


She also came home having baked until two in the morning more nights than she wants to admit, then sat down with her husband and QuickBooks to learn that a $350 week was not paying her much of anything.


That combination is the most common place a growing microbakery gets stuck. Demand is fine. The business underneath the demand is not built to carry it yet. Here is how we worked through it, and how you can run the same three fixes on your own bakery.


Find the step you are touching too many times

When someone tells me they are working too late, I do not start with the calendar. I start by looking for where they are spending a disproportionate amount of time.


For Danica, it was not the oven. She has a double oven and a pile of Dutch ovens, and she can bake four small loaves or six soup bowls in each one. The oven was not the bottleneck.


It was the mixing. For market she ran six 12-quart bins, each holding a four-times recipe, lined up down her island. Mix one, stretch and fold one, move to the next, and repeat, all the way down the row and back again for every fold.


So count the number of times you are touching a process. Six bins means six mixes and six full sets of folds. Move to a slightly larger bus tub that holds six loaves instead of four and that drops to four bins, which is a third of the touching gone for the exact same output.


Two notes on tubs. A restaurant supply store like Restaurant Depot is the cheapest place to get them, and Webstaurant online beats Amazon on price though the shipping is steep. If a huge tub of dough is genuinely too heavy for you to move, keeping your bins smaller is a strategic and necessary choice.


While you are looking, check for steps you can fold into steps you already do. Danica was laminating inclusions into some loaves as a separate pass right before shaping. Those can go in during the coil folds instead, which removes a whole handling stage from her day.


Move the work earlier instead of promising yourself an earlier alarm

The other half of the late nights is where the work sits in the day.


Danica is not a morning person, and told her husband that next time she starts a business he should stop her from picking one that needs early mornings. So the fix is not a 5am alarm she will resent.


Instead, look for what is pushing you late. For her it was the bins proofing faster than her bowls did, so she would stay up rather than let a batch overproof while she slept, and suddenly it was 2:30am.


Start those bins mixing at 8:30 in the morning on the days you do not have a meeting. And use the fridge as the flexible part of your schedule. Once dough is shaped and in a banneton it can sit in there for a day or even two. If Tuesday has no volunteer commitments and Wednesday does, do the mixing Tuesday and give it the extra fridge day.


Repeated late nights are the single most reliable route to burning out. Anything you can drag from midnight back into the daylight is worth doing.


Charge what the product is actually worth

Danica normally sells cinnamon rolls at $18. At market she decided to price them at $20 because she was carrying the risk of taking sixteen orders of cinnamon rolls back home. The pumpkin ones went out at $22. Everything sold, and not one person asked about the price!


That is your answer right there. When you test a higher number in a low-stakes setting and nobody blinks, you are underpriced.


She also does something I love without realizing it was a pricing move. Her mini scone variety used to be six for $12. For market she repacked them as eight for $14. Customers pay more and get more, and there is no old price sitting in their memory to compare it to. Changing the product, the quantity or the variation is one of the easiest ways to lift a price a dollar or two without it landing hard.


Danica mills her own wheat fresh for every bake, which she cannot prep ahead and which takes real time. If you are priced level with bakers near you who are not doing that, bump your prices, and go a couple of dollars higher than feels comfortable. People know prices are rising everywhere. Almost nobody will gripe, and the ones who value a premium product will happily pay for it.


This is not only about revenue. Bakers burn out when they pour money and four straight days of work into a business and see nothing come back. Underpricing is what makes that math impossible.


Getting more customers when a slow week rattles you

The week after that sold-out market, Danica had zero orders. She had never seen that before.


Here is what was actually happening. Everyone who bought from her at market had bread on the counter and was not in reorder mode yet. Orders tend to ebb and flow around a market schedule. January will be slow for most of us too. Knowing that in advance keeps a quiet week from feeling like a verdict on your business.


The things that do build a customer base, in order of what I would try first:

  • One or two holiday markets, if they fit your schedule. Markets are where you meet people, and the real gold is the 24 names that go on your list, not the day's sales.

  • Consistency in your local Facebook groups. Posting once a month does nothing. Showing up every week or two makes you the baker people recognize.

  • Conversational posts instead of sales posts. Something like "I am planning my Thanksgiving menu and I cannot decide between these two flavors, which do you want to see?" gets past the algorithm and separates you from every other salesy post in the group. Tag your bakery page in it so people can find you.

  • A pinned post at the top of your bakery page telling people exactly how to join your text list, so they are not just following you, they are opting in.

And take the other bakers in your town off the competitor list. Danica has neighbors who specialize in pasta, croissants and other things she has no plans to make. When you each have a niche you can refer to each other, compare notes on pricing, even run a joint bakers market so customers can source everything in one stop. Community beats isolation, and isolation is its own kind of burnout.


If you are the one who has outgrown your setup

The step Danica came up with herself is the one I would give any operator scaling a batch size.


Pick one week, mix one big bin, and do not pre-sell the loaves. Post them midweek as extras and let people grab them. You get the reps on a batch size you have never run, you learn how a bigger tub changes your proofing timeline, and nothing is riding on it if it goes sideways.


Keep an oops list too. Danica once forgot the leavening in a big batch of cinnamon rolls, posted "my oopsies, your gain" at half price, and sold eight in about twenty minutes to people who had never ordered from her before. A funny-looking bake still tastes good, recovers your ingredient money, and can hand you new customers.


Final thoughts

Danica's next ninety days are three things. Raise prices on January 1st. Build confidence with bigger batches. Keep growing the customer list.


That is it. Three things, not thirty, because the fastest way to stall a growing bakery is to try to fix everything in one week.


Growth is not linear, and slow growth is the sustainable kind. If you have an entrepreneurial brain you will want to sprint to the next level, and this season is a good one to keep yourself in check a little. I am cheering Danica on, and I am cheering you on too!


Cheering you on,


Caroline


Keep going

If you liked listening in on this one, these coaching sessions dig into the same tangles from different angles.


Links to things you might like!


 
 
 

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