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How to Start a Microbakery: Your First 30 Days, Step by Step | Episode 9

  • Nov 12, 2024
  • 8 min read

Updated: 4 days ago

Listen on Apple Podcasts


Most people who want to start a microbakery get stuck in the same place. They can bake a beautiful loaf, friends are telling them to sell it, and then they sit down to actually begin and have no idea what the first move is.


I started my in-home sourdough bakery in September of 2023. A year in, there is a lot I would do exactly the same and a handful of things I would do much earlier. So here is the whole first month, week by week, the way I would run it starting from zero today.


Grab a notebook, because this one moves fast!


Week one: build the foundation before you bake a single loaf for money

Nothing in week one makes you any money, and that is the point. You are setting the base that everything else sits on.


Research your cottage food laws. Every state is different, and you need to know exactly what you are allowed to sell, how you have to label it, and where you can sell it from. Do this first so you are compliant from day one instead of unwinding something later. I go deeper on this in episode one.


Read or listen to Profit First. One of my favorite business books ever, and I have listened to it about four times. Mike Michalowicz lays out a way to handle your business money that puts paying yourself and setting aside profit ahead of everything else you spend on. Please do not skip this one. Starting a bakery with a plan for profit is completely different from starting one and hoping it works out.


Open separate bank accounts. Business money and personal money never share an account. I do my business banking through Square, and all of the money comes in there into separate accounts. You do whatever works for you, as long as it is separate. Your future self will thank you at tax time.


Week two: your first bakes and your first five sales

Now we bake. This is the week most bakers rush, and rushing here is what causes the panic later.


Get confident with bulk baking before you sell anything. I have watched so many bakers post about selling bread, get a wave of interest, commit to five or six loaves, and then discover that mixing six at once is a completely different animal than mixing one. Large batches proof faster than small ones and the timing shifts on you. Practice in a big bin or across several bowls until it feels normal, and gift or donate those experimental loaves.


Post a conversational post in a local group. Not your personal Facebook page. Find a geographic group for your town or neighborhood, read the posting guidelines, and pick the ones where people are actually commenting on each other's posts.


Then share a little of your story instead of an ad. Mine sounded something like: this new hobby of baking is getting out of hand, I am having so much fun with it, but we are running out of freezer space. What do you suggest I do with my extra loaves?


That post is genuinely one of the biggest reasons my bakery worked. It invites people in, so they answer you and feel like they helped you get started. I still have customers from that first post who feel like they have been part of the story from the beginning. A post that says "hey, I sell sourdough now" gets scrolled past.


Sell about five loaves. Bake six, keep one for the family as quality control, sell five. That is enough to feel the market without over-committing. Ask those five people to shout you out on social media if they love it, because word of mouth is the most valuable marketing a small local business has.


Do not underprice yourself because you are new. I priced my very first two loaves a little low, and after that I charged my regular price with no beginner discount. Look at what others in your local market charge, calculate the cost of your ingredients, and account for your overhead and your time. I go through the whole thing in Maximize Your Bakery Profits with Strategic Pricing.


Take about ten dollars of that money and buy more ingredients. Keep your spending low at the start. This is how you protect your margin while you are still learning what sells.


Buy real bannetons. I use the plastic faux wicker ones with cheesecloth liners, because they are food safe, washable, and mold resistant. Real wicker works too, it just costs more. Skip the dollar store bowls and colanders so many early bakers start with. You will want actual baskets within a few weeks anyway, and spending twenty or thirty dollars once beats replacing cheap bowls over and over.


Set up an ordering platform. This is the one I wish I had done sooner, because I started on a makeshift form and had to move everybody over later. Use a real pre-order platform built for this, like Simply Bread or Hotplate. They are free to set up and take a small fee out of the customer's total, which you can absorb, pass along, or split. They handle your inventory limits and your customer communication so you are not chasing orders across a pile of messages.


Set up a texting number. I use Project Broadcast, which gave me a local number customers can text instead of my personal phone, and a way to opt them into a list. Every week when my orders open I send one text, and the majority of my repeat orders come from that text. Social posts get missed. Texts get read.


Week three: get on a schedule and look like a real business

You have sales under your belt now. This week is about making the operation predictable.


Pick one or two bake days a week and hold them. Your customers learn when to order, you stop taking one-off orders on random days, and nothing slips through the cracks. One larger bake day or two smaller ones, whatever fits your life. The predictability is the whole benefit.


Post a big thank you in that same local group. Something like: y'all blew me away, thank you so much for the support, I am so grateful. Then at the very end, drop your order link for anyone who missed out. It is genuine gratitude with a door left open, and it tells everyone reading that this thing is working.


Buy a couple of large food-safe tubs. Bus tubs, dough bins, whatever you can source. They let you mix more at once, they take lids, and they stack. When I started I had bowls covering every surface of my counter and it was miserable to manage and clean.


Put a thermal label printer on your radar. If your sales do not support it in week three, that is completely fine, just get it on the list. It is one of my favorite business purchases ever, and it never needs ink because it prints with heat. I design my labels in Canva and print them as I need them.


One thing I learned the slow way: I started with three small labels, one for the cottage food disclaimer, one for the flavor, one for contact info. That was three separate touches on every package. Now I use one larger label that holds everything and also seals the bag. Bread in the bag, fold it down, one sticker. That change gave me back a real chunk of time every bake day.


Week four: get in front of people who have never heard of you

By week four the novelty has worn off a little. The buzz from your first two weeks is settling down and people are thinking, oh, she is here to stay, I will order when I need her. So this week you make some new noise.


Get business cards printed. They are cheap, I design mine in Canva and order right through Canva, and I put a QR code on them that goes to my order page and socials. Slip one in with every pickup order and mention it, so people can stick it on the fridge or pass it to a friend.


Launch a brand new menu item. Something people have been asking for, something you polled your audience about, or just a flavor you want to play with. Hype it up, mention that the quantity is limited, and give people a reason to pay attention again.


Take your bread to a local market. Up to now everyone has been picking up from you, which means you are only reaching people who already found you. A market puts you in front of people who are not on social media at all, and in front of the followers whose schedules never matched your pickup window.


Bake what your current capacity comfortably allows, which for most new bakers is somewhere around twelve to twenty loaves. The goal is to sell out, or come close. Then post about it that night: thank you so much for the support, you all sold me out today, come early next time. And add your order link for the people who missed you.


For most bakers the prep is the hard part, a couple of genuinely full days. Once you are set up and sitting behind your table, though, it is a fun and energizing day. You hear what people love and you meet your community face to face. I walk through choosing and prepping for markets in Simple Steps to Sell Your Sourdough Bread at Markets.


If you are already a year or two in, run this as an audit

You do not get to skip this list just because you are past month one. Most of the bakers I talk to who feel stuck are missing one or two of these foundations, and that gap is what is costing them.

  • Are your business and personal finances actually separate, and are you paying yourself on purpose?

  • Are you on a real pre-order platform, or still catching orders in your messages and comments?

  • Do you own a direct line to your customers, a text list or an email list, that does not depend on an algorithm?

  • Are your bake days fixed, or are you still saying yes to one-off orders on random days?

  • Have you calculated the cost of your ingredients recently, or are you working off a price you set when you started?

Fix the oldest gap first. Foundations are cheaper to build when you are small, and every month you wait adds customers you will have to move later.


Final thoughts

The whole first month comes down to going step by step, staying inside your real capacity, and not letting the excitement talk you into promising more bread than you can bake. Compliance, clean finances, and an easy ordering experience are not the fun parts, but they are what let you grow later without backtracking.


You do not need it all figured out by day thirty. You just need a foundation you are not going to have to tear up.


Cheering you on,


Caroline


Keep going

If this is the season you are in, these three will help you build on it.


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