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Moving From a Home Bakery to a Commercial Space | Episode 110

  • Dec 4, 2025
  • 7 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

Listen on Apple Podcasts


Most of us run our bakeries by rolling straight from one month into the next. The orders come in, we bake them, we clean up, and then it is somehow the first of the month again with no idea what actually worked.


I have been doing a written month in review for over a year, and it is the cheapest business habit I have. Four questions, a pen and a piece of paper. What worked? What did not? What did I learn? How am I moving forward?


November was the month I moved out of my home bakery and into a commercial space, so this one has more moving parts than usual. I am walking you through the whole thing, partly so you can see how the practice works, and partly because a big transition surfaces lessons that apply whether you are opening a storefront or adding a second market.


The four questions, and how to actually use them

Sit down at the end of the month with your sales data open in front of you and answer these:

  • What worked? Products, pickup formats, marketing channels, days of the week.

  • What did not? Be specific. "The holiday was stressful" is not usable. "I split my product 50/50 and the wrong location sold out" is.

  • What did I learn? The thing you would tell yourself if you could go back four weeks.

  • How am I moving forward? One or two concrete changes, not a list of ten.

Then look at the month ahead and name where the opportunity is. It works monthly, and it works even better quarterly, when you zoom out and check that you are still on the track you chose.


What the move actually took

My last home bake day was November 8th, a farmers market Saturday, and I sold out. Two days later my husband borrowed a trailer and a couple of strong friends helped us load the fridges, freezer, tables, shelving and bins out of my house. Watching that trailer fill up was the moment it landed that all of it had been living inside my home.


The oven arrived November 11th. We bought a hydraulic lift from Home Depot for around two hundred dollars, pulled the stones out to drop the weight, strapped it, cranked it to the height of the stand and slid it across. That two hundred dollars saved our backs and probably a chiropractor bill!


Two things worth stealing if you are outfitting a space:

  • Restaurant auctions. My prep room has a four foot by eight foot butcher block table that is realistically a three to four thousand dollar table. I paid a couple hundred dollars and a lot of sanding. I have also picked up shelving and a speed rack that way. It is hit or miss, so go looking without a specific thing in mind.

  • Budget for a learning curve, not just a purchase. My starter needed about a week to settle into the new space and water, and I am still dialing in the new oven deck by deck. Plan lighter production while you learn, because your output will not be predictable for a few weeks.

One more part nobody puts in the announcement post. I am a self-taught baker, coming up on three years, and I have never taken a baking class, so there is a voice that asks who I think I am to be doing this. Then I remember that nobody else is doing it here and my town needs it. If you are staring at an opportunity that feels too big, walk through the open door and see what happens.


What worked: a small holiday menu and timed pickups

Thanksgiving was my first holiday out of the commercial space, and it went better than any holiday I have run at home. Not because I got faster. The menu was small and the pickups were paced.


My whole Thanksgiving menu was dinner rolls in packs of nine, cinnamon rolls in packs of four, original sourdough, sandwich bread, scones and a dry stuffing mix. That is it. I have learned through plenty of trial and error that the tighter my holiday menu is, the more of it I can actually deliver.


I offered fifty packs of dinner rolls, sold through them fast, got brave and added twenty more, and sold all seventy. People still asked for more, so I told them kindly that I would have a handful of extras on pickup day, first come first served, and could not hold any. Several of them showed up and bought every extra.


The change that made the day calm was requiring a fifteen minute pickup window at checkout in Simply Bread. Instead of racing to bag fifty orders before the doors opened, I packed the ten o'clock orders, handed those out, then packed the eleven o'clock wave. If you take pre-orders and are not doing this yet, put it in place before your next holiday. It is the closest thing to free capacity I know of.


One customer showed up thirty minutes late, which is a small thing that costs real time. My retail hours are seven to two, so I moved my pre-order pickup window to close at 1:30, and now the stragglers land inside my open hours instead of after them.


A few more things that earned their keep:

  • Prepping ahead what actually keeps. My scones, cookies and stuffing mix were made the week before, and I mixed all the bread and brioche dough on Monday for Wednesday pickups.

  • Shelf-stable add-ons. The stuffing mix is dry, preps early and people love adding it on. That made me try granola on the pre-order menu the next week, and a handful of people added it. I want to be known for that granola, so getting it into more hands is worth more than the margin.

  • Having help. My assistant and I did eight hundred and twenty dinner rolls in about three hours, him cutting and weighing while I rolled. Alone, that day would have owned me. If you are on the fence about bringing someone in for the holidays, I go through the whole thing in When and How to Hire Your First Bakery Assistant | Episode 111.


What did not work

The second farmers market of the month was the first time I had to be in two places at once. My husband and kids ran the booth and did beautifully. My mistake was the product split: I sent about half and half, and I should have sent seventy percent to the market.


The market is where people have known to find me for two years. That booth sold out early while I sat on unsold product at the shop, because customers are still learning the storefront exists. I sent flyers with a ten percent discount along with my family, and I expect the shift to be a slow, steady build.


My soft opening was the other miss. It was a wonderful day, never a moment without someone in the shop, and I was completely alone. I did not start baking early enough, and I spent the day at the register bagging orders while timers went off. I joke that I am a duck: calm on the surface, paddling like mad underneath. On a day like that I needed a second person at the register and an earlier start.


The open question I am still sitting in is how much to bake on a regular open day. Today I have three loaves of sandwich bread pre-sold and no idea how many walk-ins are coming, so I am baking twelve of the twenty four I have ready and holding the rest in the fridge for tomorrow. Unsold product goes to the food bank, and I would rather not lean on that as a plan.


The operator's version of this: use two data sources, not your memory

If you are a few years in with real revenue, do this part properly. I pull top products from both my Square POS, which covers the market and the storefront register, and my Simply Bread app, which covers pre-orders. Two systems, one list, sorted by units sold.


What that surfaced for November: original sourdough is my top seller, with sandwich bread right behind it and pulling ahead in warmer months. Seeded sandwich bread has taken off in the shop. Focaccia, bread bowls, scones, coffee cake muffins and chocolate chip cookies round out the list. Holiday items skew the data, so read around them.


Then act on it. My December menu leans into what that list told me plus the seasonal opportunity: gift bundles and curated boxes, gift cards for the bakery and my workshops, and cozy flavors built on base recipes I already know work. I am opening pre-orders on all three open days with one featured sweet each day, so the week has a rhythm and I know roughly what to bake.


I am also going harder on free local marketing than paid: local Facebook groups, Nextdoor, my Chamber of Commerce, and my Google listing, which was finally approved. People have walked in because they found me on Google, which is why that listing is worth the paperwork. If holiday planning is where you are right now, How to Prepare for a Profitable and Burnout-Free Q4 in Your Microbakery | Episode 104 is the one to pair with this.


Final thoughts

November was not a tidy month. It was a move, a new oven, a holiday and a new hire stacked on top of each other, and it still produced better decisions than a smooth month would have, because I wrote down what happened.


If you are in a transition season, know that the learning curve is weeks to months, not days, and that is not a sign you made the wrong call. Pull your numbers, answer the four questions, pick one or two changes, and walk into next month with a plan instead of a hope.


Cheering you on,


Caroline


Keep going

If you liked this one, these are the ones I would hand you next.


Links to things you might like!


 
 
 

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