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How to Simplify Your Sourdough Microbakery Menu | Episode 115

Jan 29
6 min read

Updated: Jul 30

Listen on Apple Podcasts or watch on YouTube


There is a common belief in this world that baking more means selling more. Bake more bread, make more money. It seems obvious, and to a point it is true.


But somewhere along the way, more options start costing you. More prep, more ingredients to keep in stock, more mental load, and not much more profit at the end of it.


I hit that wall with my own menu. I realized I had half the wheel invented and was rebuilding the other half from scratch every single week. So I sat down and built a repeatable system, and I want to walk you through exactly how it works so you can build your own version of it.


The three-layer menu

My menu now has three layers, and every product I sell belongs to one of them.

  • Core products are always available. People plan their week around them.

  • Rotating items change on a schedule my customers can see coming.

  • Daily specials are assigned to a specific day of the week.

I am in a brick and mortar now, open Thursday, Friday and Saturday, so my third layer runs by day. If you bake once a week from home, that layer becomes a two-week or monthly rotation instead. The structure holds either way.


Layer one: your core

Core products are what I want to be known for. They are not exciting and they are not supposed to be. Their job is to be there.


Mine are original rustic sourdough baked as a batard, sandwich bread, focaccia, chocolate chip muffins, coffee cake muffins, chocolate chip cookies, and two pantry items with a long shelf life, one granola and one cracker. One variety of each, no flavor options.


Those items earned their place because they:

  • Sell consistently, week after week, in every season.

  • Fit smoothly into my production flow.

  • Take no decision-making from me at all.

  • Get gifted and bought weekly, because people need bread for their kids' sandwiches.

Keep your core small. Five products is plenty, and three is a perfectly good core when you are working out of a home kitchen.


Layer two: rotating items, with real guardrails

Rotation is where the fun lives, and it needs limits or it eats you alive. I have had two flavored loaves on the shelf, and I have had seven, all while also doing scones, cookies, muffins, pizza and English muffins. Seven was too much.


Now I run one flavored sourdough per week, alternating sweet and savory. Scones get two flavors a month, each one on the menu for two weeks, also alternating sweet and savory. Last month that was candied walnut and fig for two weeks, then jalapeno cheddar for two.


The best part of this is what it does to a customer conversation. When someone asks when the jalapeno cheddar is coming back, I can tell them it is two weeks out instead of saying I am not sure. Not one customer has ever walked in and told me they wish I had twelve flavors to choose from!


Layer three: predictable daily specials

Instead of trying to have every favorite available every day, I gave each one a day.

  • Thursday is par-baked pizza crusts, plus take-and-bake pizza dough when I have extra. Check your cottage law before you sell raw dough, because the rules vary by state and it only recently became allowed here in Texas.

  • Friday is English muffins, alternating rounds one week and English muffin bread loaves the next, because some customers want to choose their own slice thickness.

  • Saturday is cinnamon rolls. People come in first thing so they do not miss out, the way we used to go get donuts on a Saturday morning.

My English muffins sell out every single time. I could bake them every day and they would sell. Putting them on Friday means people plan ahead and pre-order instead of assuming they can catch them tomorrow. That is not a gimmick, and there is nothing false about it. My capacity is real, and a rhythm makes it work for both of us.


If you bake once a week, do the same thing on a longer cycle. Scones and English muffins the first Thursday, pizza crust and muffins the next. Your customer buys two boxes of muffins and freezes one because they know the next round is a month out.


A month into running it this way, my customers had the rhythm down cold, and I could see it in the numbers. I broke that month down in Are Sourdough Workshops Worth It? My January Revenue Recap | Episode 117.


What I cut

My business coach recently asked me what I would do this year if I knew I could not fail. My gut answer surprised me: I would do a whole lot less.


Looking at my menu, I could see I was offering all of it because I did not want to disappoint anybody. So here is what came off:

  • Extra flavor variations. Three or four at once was too much for me and more than anyone needed.

  • The number of different products on any single day. Same total output, spread across the week on a schedule.

  • The pressure to have everything available all the time.

Just because something sells does not mean it has earned unlimited airtime.


Four rules that keep the menu from creeping back

Rules take the emotion out of it. I am not asking whether I feel like testing a new cookie recipe. I am asking whether it meets the criteria.

  • At least half the menu has to be prep-ahead, freezer-friendly, or long shelf life. My cookies, muffins and scones all bake from frozen beautifully.

  • Every new product gets four weeks before I decide whether it stays. They do not have to be consecutive weeks, but one slow launch is not a verdict.

  • Peak seasons are for proven products only. May, November and December are not the months to experiment.

  • Recipe testing happens before the busy season. If it has not happened yet, it waits.

That first rule is doing more work than it looks like. When I think about adding another core bread later this year, something like a rye or a spelt, the real question is whether my prep day can carry another thing that has to be baked fresh the same day.


If you are a year or three in

You have the demand. Your problem now is that your menu grew faster than your systems did.

  • Count how many different products you put out on your single busiest day. That number, not your weekly total, is what your prep day is actually paying for.

  • Look at what you have added in the last year and check whether anything came off to make room. If nothing did, that is why prep feels heavier.

  • Once your rotation is set, load a whole month into your pre-order platform at once. Mine goes into Simply Bread as a duplicate with the rotating flavors swapped, scheduled to go live by week, so customers can see what is coming and plan which weeks to order.

  • Add your next core product only after the current rhythm runs like a machine. Growth comes from strengthening what works, not from adding complexity early.

Once your menu is set, the thing that keeps it set is a short monthly check-in, so you are reviewing instead of re-planning. I walk through mine in How to Run a Monthly Check-In in Your Sourdough Microbakery | Episode 116.


Your action step this week

Sit down with a piece of paper and do this in order.

  1. Write down every product you offer over a typical two-month stretch, including rotating flavors.

  2. Circle the ones that sell consistently and feel easy to execute.

  3. Cross out anything that creates stress without a matching return, especially whatever you procrastinate on during prep day.

  4. Choose your core. No more than five, and three is fine.

  5. Decide what rotates and how often, and write that rhythm down where your customers can see it.


Final thoughts

People do not want endless options. Think about standing in front of thirty-one flavors of ice cream, hemming and hawing for ten minutes, when five flavors would have gotten you to a scoop you loved in thirty seconds.


Fewer things done well means I show up more consistently for my customers, for my team, and for myself. Consistency and repeatability are boring in the very best way, and they are the foundation of a business that does not burn you out. You do not need a smaller business. You need a cleaner one.


Cheering you on,


Caroline


Keep going

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