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The 6 Pillars of a Profitable Sourdough Microbakery | Episode 20

  • Nov 12, 2024
  • 6 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

Listen on Apple Podcasts or watch on YouTube


Most of us did not set out to become business owners. I started selling sourdough on a whim, and it snowballed into something much bigger than I planned for.


What I worked out pretty quickly is that this is about 60 percent making good business decisions and 40 percent baking bread. The baking is the part everyone sees, and it is not the part that decides whether you are still doing this in three years.


Before the bakery I had three years of running another business, plus fifteen years working for other business owners. When I put all of that together with what I have learned since, six pillars kept showing up. When one of them is missing your business still moves, it just walks with a limp. You go forward, and you are putting out fires the whole way.


Here are all six, and what it looks like to actually work on one.


1. Marketing

Marketing feels enormous until you shrink it down to what it really is, which is making sure the people who need your bread know that you exist.


You can be the best baker in your town and still struggle if nobody knows about you. That is not a baking problem, and better bread will not fix it.


The work here is:

  • Get clear on who your bread is for. Not everyone. The specific person whose week gets better because you are open.

  • Speak to that person in your captions, your emails and your conversations at pickup, instead of trying to speak to everyone at once.

  • Build real relationships. Ask for feedback, tell people what is going on in your kitchen, let them get to know the person behind the bread.

None of that requires a bigger following. It requires being clear about who you are talking to.


2. Sales

Sales gets a bad name because we all picture the guy at the door trying to sell us new windows.


That is not how I sell and it is not how I teach it. Selling is talking to the right person and helping them make a decision that improves their life, which in our case is bringing home really good bread to their family.


Two things move the needle. The first is knowing your product well enough to answer questions with confidence: ingredients, process, what makes yours different, why it costs what it costs.


The second is being willing to say when you are not the right fit. If someone wants something you do not make, sending them somewhere else builds far more trust than a reluctant yes.


Confidence in sales is a muscle. It does not arrive in three months, and three months of practice will get you noticeably further than you are today.


3. Process optimization

If you have ever had one of those days where you are baking, packing orders, trying to get a post up, answering an email that has been sitting for two days and drinking lukewarm coffee at three in the afternoon, this pillar is for you. I think that day is close to universal for bakers.


Optimizing your process means touching each thing fewer times, so you get through the same work in fewer steps.


Watch yourself for one full bake day and write down every single step you take. Then look for the steps that exist for no reason, the ones you repeat, and the ones you could batch together. Cutting three steps out of a weekly bake gives you hours back every month.


Do not fill that time with more work. Use it to catch your breath and to enjoy the parts of this you actually love, because that is what makes a business you can keep doing.


4. Product optimization

Your menu is a business decision. It is very easy to let it turn into a list of whatever you enjoy baking.


A menu that works is aimed at your ideal customer, holds the right number of items, and matches what you want your bakery to be known for. Most of the menus I see have too much on them.


Look at yours and ask:

  • Which items sell consistently, week after week? Those get perfected and promoted.

  • Which items eat your whole morning for what they bring in? Those come off your menu, or get priced properly.

  • What do customers keep asking for that you have not offered yet?

Refining, consolidating and occasionally adding are all good moves. Letting the menu grow by accident is the one that costs you.


5. Cash flow systemization

If you are running a business, you need to be making money from it, and you need to be paying yourself.


It is very easy to have money come in and turn straight back around into more flour, more bins, more packaging. That feels responsible. Do it long enough without paying yourself and you will burn out, because you will be pouring in time and never seeing anything come back.


My favorite resource here is Profit First by Mike Michalowicz. He narrates the audiobook himself and it is genuinely enjoyable, which is not something I say about most business books. The method is simple. Every time money comes in, you divide it into set percentages before you spend any of it, and one of those slices is yours to keep.


Whichever system you use, know where your money is going, know what you are reinvesting, and pay yourself on a schedule. When your finances are steady you can make bigger decisions without lying awake wondering whether you can afford them.


6. Lifestyle optimization

This is the one that gets skipped, and I think it might be the most important of the six.


Almost every baker I know started this to get more control over their life, more time with their family, more flexibility. It is very easy for the business to quietly take all of that back.


I sleep eight hours a night at least five nights a week, and my business is built around making that happen. If I am not sleeping I do not show up well, and then none of this lasts.


Audit your time the way you would audit your process. Write down how many hours you are actually working. Then decide what you are protecting, whether that is exercise, dinner with your family or a morning that has nothing to do with bread, and build the schedule around those things first.


We are anti burnout around here!


If you are already a year or two in

You cannot fix all six at once, and trying is its own kind of burnout.


Give yourself a score out of ten on each pillar right now. Marketing, sales, process, product, cash flow, lifestyle. Whichever number is lowest is where your business is limping, and in my experience it is rarely the one you were about to work on.


Cash flow and lifestyle are the two that hide. Nobody comments on your Instagram about how consistently you pay yourself, and nobody sees the week you worked eighty hours. That is exactly why they slide.


Pick your lowest score and give it ninety days of real attention. One pillar at a time is how a business gets steady.


Final thoughts

So which pillar will you work on first?


You do not need a course or a program to start on any of these. Pick the one that made you wince while you were reading, give it your attention for the next month, and let the other five sit for now.


A business standing on all six feet is steady. It is repeatable, it makes money, and it fits the life you actually wanted when you started this. That is worth building slowly.


Cheering you on,


Caroline


Keep going

If this one got your wheels turning, here is where I would send you next.


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