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What a $4,395 Month Looks Like With Only 3 Bake Days | Episode 90

  • Jul 2, 2025
  • 6 min read

Updated: 23 hours ago

Listen on Apple Podcasts or watch on YouTube


There is a version of this business where you bake every single week, all year long, and slowly run yourself into the ground. I lived in that version for a while, and in June I did something different on purpose.


I cut down to three bake days for the whole month, spent more time with my family, and still had one of the strongest revenue months I have had. Here are the numbers, the menu change that made the biggest difference, and the two things that went badly enough that I am fixing them in July.


What three bake days actually brought in

From January through May I ran two porch pickups and two farmers markets a month, my market falling on the second and fourth Saturday and porch pickups on the opposite Thursdays. It worked, and I could feel summer coming. So in June I did one final porch pickup in the first week to move my customers onto the new rhythm, and after that only the markets.


Here is the month in gross revenue, meaning top line sales before fees, packaging and ingredients:

  • Porch pickup, mostly basics: $546

  • Two markets combined: $3,707

  • Total for the month: $4,395

The second market broke my record. I crossed $2,000 in a single day for only the second time ever. That felt wonderful, and it also took everything I had.


I loosely tracked my time on both markets, from feeding my starter through breaking down the booth. The first came in around 32 hours, the second closer to 40, because I brought a huge amount of product including English muffins, which stretch my bake time more than anything else on my menu. I treat this like a full time job and I work full time hours.


Your hours stop scaling with your revenue, and that is the good news

Here is the part I want the newer bakers to sit with. I worked very similar hours back when my revenue was a fraction of this, and what changed was my equipment and my processes.


This business runs on economy of scale. The effort it takes to make 60 loaves is close to the effort it takes to make 20. Same starter feeding, same mixing session, same cleanup, same drive to the market. Once you clear the things that hold you back, a double oven setup if your kitchen allows it, a real mixer, better bins, your output climbs without your hours climbing with it.


So if you are putting in 30 hours right now for a fraction of that revenue, you are not doing it wrong. You are early.


The menu change my customers asked for, over and over

For as long as I have made inclusion loaves, I made them the same size as my regular loaves. That is 900 grams, and I charge $12 for a 900 gram inclusion loaf. Please do not price off my numbers, that is simply what my market supports.


Customers kept telling me the same thing. They love the cinnamon raisin, the jalapeno cheddar, the garlic rosemary, and they cannot get through a full 900 gram loaf before it goes bad, so they freeze it, share it, or throw part of it away. When you hear the same sentence from enough different people, treat it as product research.


For the last two markets I brought my inclusion loaves in mini size only, no 900 gram inclusions at all. I charge $7 for a mini, or two for $12, which is what I have always charged for minis. Someone who wants the same amount of bread pays what they paid before, and someone who only wants one pays a small premium that covers the extra labor of shaping two loaves instead of one.


They have been so popular. People mix and match, they grab two flavors, sometimes four. Best feedback I have had on any change I made this year, and I am keeping it.


The process change that made minis worth doing

Smaller loaves mean more shaping, so I reworked my steps:

  • I mix the same way and add my inclusions during the stretch and folds, no change there.

  • At pre-shape, I pre-shape into 450 gram rounds instead of full size.

  • The rounds go into shallow dough proofing bins, 18 by 26 by 3 inches. They stack, so each bin becomes the lid of the one below it and I only need one real lid on top. Six of them fit my 21 cubic foot fridge perfectly.

  • They cold proof in the bins. If I keep it to about a dozen per bin they do not stick together and pull out easily.

  • The next morning I do a single coil to shape each one into an oval and bake.

I bake them two ways, my usual open bake and lately in loaf pans with liners. At 450 grams the pans still give me most of the shape I want, and the liners keep brown sugar and cheese off my oven floor, so no smoke and no scrubbing. Same fridge space, same oven capacity, smoother morning.


Be willing to revisit a process you have not touched in a year. Sometimes you confirm it is fine, and sometimes you find twenty minutes hiding in it.


One Facebook post, months apart, still works

I posted in a big local moms group in June for the first time in a while, following their required format for business posts, from my personal page, tagging my business page in the first line.


It was not a sales post. I put up a picture of myself with a couple of loaves and said hey, I own Bluebird Bread Co, I sell sourdough up in Bulverde, you can find me at the market every second and fourth Saturday. Then I mentioned the storefront I am working on and invited people to follow along on Instagram. New followers came over, and a few new faces showed up at the market.


Your local marketing does not have to be a daily or weekly thing. I go a couple of months between posts like this, and those occasional check ins keep me recognizable, so when I have something big to announce people already know who I am.


What went badly in June

Packaging nearly broke me. My kids usually help label bags and I pay them cash for it, and they were at my mother in law's for that second market week, so I did all of it alone and was up labeling English muffins far past my bedtime. My threshold is about a dozen bags of them. Past that, my revenue goes up and my hours go up right along with it.


The deeper problem is that I have not rehired an assistant. I had one for several months and have been solo since February, because I have felt too busy to interview, hire and train anyone.


That is a dangerous place to sit. Feeling too busy to get help is exactly what turns into burnout if you stay in it long enough, and the hours you spend bringing someone on come back to you. I am preaching to myself here, so hold my feet to the fire. I am hiring for July, even if it is only eight to ten hours before each market.


If you are a year or three in, run this audit

You have real revenue and real customers, so here is what I would look at:

  • Track one full bake cycle, start to finish, including packaging, setup and teardown, just so you know the real number.

  • Find the item on your menu that eats the most hours per dollar. For me that is English muffins. Set a threshold quantity for it and hold the line.

  • Take what your customers keep repeating to you seriously as product feedback, the way I did with the minis.

  • If you have been solo for months and keep saying you are too busy to hire, put hiring on your calendar this week. That sentence is a symptom.

  • Get connected locally before you need it. I joined our Chamber of Commerce in June ahead of opening a space and it has already been worth it.


Final thoughts

The month I baked the least was one of my best months, and that came from choices I made before it. Better bins, a better mixer, a menu that matches what people actually want to buy, and a rhythm that leaves room for my family.


Go look at your own last month that way. Where did the money come from, where did the hours go, and what is the one change your customers keep asking you for that you have not made yet?


Cheering you on,


Caroline


Keep going

If you like the behind the scenes numbers, here are a few more months worth peeking at.


Links to things you might like!


 
 
 

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