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Summer Planning for Your Microbakery: Scale Back or Grow | Episode 128

  • May 21
  • 6 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

Listen on Apple Podcasts or watch on YouTube


The rhythm that worked beautifully in your bakery all spring is about to stop working. Kids are home with no routine, half your customers are out of town, your kitchen is hot, and the dough is moving faster than your timeline says it should.


Most bakers meet that moment somewhere in early July, decide they cannot keep going, and cancel a week. That works, and it costs you more than deciding on purpose in May would have.


I have run three very different summers in my bakery. One steady, one deliberately scaled way back, and this year a full closure for a good part of July. Every one of them was the right call for that year, and none of them was a reaction.


Here is how to decide which summer you are actually running, before summer decides for you.


What summer changes in a microbakery

Summer touches almost every part of the operation, and it is worth naming the pieces so you can plan around them.

  • Your kids are home, there is no routine, and somebody needs a snack roughly every eleven minutes.

  • Travel. Yours, and your customers'.

  • Heat. In a warm climate your dough moves faster, which changes your prep timeline whether or not you planned for it.

  • Lower energy. Mine drops in the afternoons, and I stop pretending it does not.

  • Market availability. In hot climates some markets close for the season. In other regions summer is the market season, and there is more opportunity than you had all spring.

And sometimes summer just reveals how tired you already were after spring. If you have kids in school you know exactly what I mean, because May is its own kind of madness.


There is no one right summer strategy, and here are three that worked

My first summer I barely changed anything. I alternated one week of markets with one week of porch pickups, and it was steady and it worked.


My second summer I scaled back hard. I have been at the same bi-weekly market for going on three years now, every second and fourth Saturday, and that summer I did only the market. No porch pickups at all. I baked twice a month.


I knew that meant a revenue dip and I was completely fine with it. I was working toward opening the bakery and I wanted to stockpile rest. We spent afternoons in the pool, we made a lot of library trips, and we had a lot of slow mornings. The markets themselves performed really well, and I kept sharing what was coming and where I would be, so nothing about my visibility changed.


This summer I am running business as usual in June and closing the bakery for a good part of July. July is genuinely slow here. People travel, and fewer people want hearty bread when it is that hot in South Texas. We are taking a family trip, and I would rather close on my own terms in the slowest month than limp through it.


Weekly rhythm, bi-weekly rhythm, planned closure. Each one came down to what I wanted out of that particular summer and what my family needed from it.


Proactive scaling back looks nothing like reactive scaling back

This is the whole point, so I am going to be a little bossy about it.


Reactive sounds like: I cannot keep doing this, I am overwhelmed, I guess I will just cancel this week.


Proactive sounds like: I am running only the market in July, my customers know the dates, and I am back the first week of August.


Same reduced schedule. Completely different experience for you, and a completely different signal to your customers. One reads as a business with a plan. The other reads as a business that might be going away.


Rest is a tool, and it belongs inside the business the same way a prep day does. Building it into your calendar on purpose keeps it from being forced on you later.


Your customers will not forget you

The fear underneath all of this is that if you go quiet for a few weeks, people will move on. In my experience they are always there when you come back.


Here is exactly what I do. I put a post up on Instagram with the closure dates well ahead of time, and I encourage people to grab a couple of extra loaves for the freezer before we go. I expect a slightly slow ramp back up when we reopen, and then everything returns to normal.


Loyal customers respect a business owner who takes planned time off. What they cannot work with is silence and guesswork.


Your summer planning sit-down

Grab a coffee while your bread is in the oven and work through these five. This takes maybe thirty minutes and it will shape your entire season.

  1. Write down your real commitments. Travel, vacation, kids' events, VBS, birthdays, camps. Everything that is already true. You are building the bakery around your actual life, not an imaginary one.

  2. Get honest about your goal for this summer. Do you want to be in the pool every afternoon? Do you want to grow while the kids are out of school? Do you want to hit a revenue number you have never hit before? All three are legitimate. They just cannot all be the goal at once.

  3. Look at what opportunities exist and fit them around your constraints. Not in spite of them. If the trip and the pool afternoons are immovable, then look at which markets, which wholesale conversations and which pre-order weeks actually fit in the space that is left.

  4. Decide to scale back or decide to push, and make it a choice. Either one is fine. Making it in May is what matters.

  5. Stop comparing. What worked for me, or for the baker whose summer looks perfect on Instagram, is not evidence about your business. Nobody else's summer is yours.


If you are a few years in, use summer to work on the business

For those of you with real revenue and a rhythm that already runs, the slower stretch is the most valuable planning window you get all year. It is my favorite way to use summer.


Without the school-year chaos of drop-offs and extracurriculars, your time may actually be more flexible than it is in September. That is the window to work on the business instead of in it.


Some things that are worth more than a few extra bake days right now:

  • Write down the processes that only live in your head, so someone else could eventually run them

  • Look hard at your menu and cut the items that are not paying for the labor they take

  • Calculate the cost of your ingredients again, because your costs have moved since you last checked

  • Build the fall and holiday plan while you have the brain space, instead of in October

  • Strengthen your local marketing so you go into your busiest season with a warmer list

None of that shows up on a bake sheet. All of it shows up in your fall numbers.


Final thoughts

The goal was never to hustle through summer exhausted so you can say you stayed open. The goal is a bakery rhythm that supports your household, serves your customers well, protects your energy, and still works in December.


Summer does not have to be chaotic. Planned on purpose, it can be one of the healthiest seasons your business has, whether that means a bigger market schedule or a closed sign in July.


Go make the decision now, while it is still yours to make!


Cheering you on,


Caroline


Keep going

If you are mapping out your season, these three go deeper on the same problem.


Links to things you might like!


 
 
 
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