How to Start a bakery [ 5 steps from my experience]
Looking to take those recipes and make a business from them? Well here are 5 tips [ I learned the hard way]
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I'm going to give you the top five things I learned when I
started a retail bakery and how I would recommend you actually start one
yourself if you're looking to do this. This took many years to learn. Of
course, when I first started, my wife and I had a handful of these that I'm
going to go over with you that I really honestly should have done a little bit
more research on. Uh, but it was a great learning experience and it gave me an
opportunity to get a taste of how to operate and run my own bakery. Uh, so we
actually had an Italian bakery that we specialized in. We had over 40 different
cookies. We had pastries and gelato, we did panini sandwiches and freshly made
breads. We had a variety of products. So I'm going to dive into it and let's
get right into that list.
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Cause there's a lot of retail locations that also have a
maintenance fee to maintain the property around it. Do you have to put a grease
trap in? How much is your insurance going to run every month and so on and so
on. So you want to cover the entire parameters to understand what is it going
to really take to get started initially and how much you'll have to come out of
pocket to get this up and running. One of the things that we didn't quite
understand was the expense for the equipment. So we ended up adding on
additional panini sandwiches. So we actually had to buy a sandwich prep table,
which costs nearly $3,000 for a simple table just by itself. Um, and then the
bakery part of it where we were doing breads, we had to have a special oven.
Um, and so on and so on.
There was a ton of equipment that we really didn't factor
in when we first started because we kept expanding and offering a multitude of
other products which incurred more equipment and more types of ingredients as
well. Okay. So number three, do not offer too many items. We got really excited
when we had our bakery. We had the ability obviously to create whatever we
wanted and sell what we wanted. But we really did step over the line. I think
of too many things which can kind of spread yourself thin. Plus having a
multitude of ingredients and inventory on hand to create those products can
sometimes be a big problem and a potential hazard for your finances by offering
too many things. So the one thing I learned is focus in on maybe half a dozen
or just a handful of particular products that you want to do.
Uh, and then if you want to incorporate some sandwiches or
you want to bring in gelato, something to that effect would be fine. We ended
up bringing about like as mentioned 30 or so different types of cookies. We had
eclairs, we had canolas, we had pastries, we did a lot of other things and then
adding on the breads and it just really over kind of overwhelmed ourselves with
the variety of stuff because with that, with those different types of product
comes with it, different equipment and different ingredients and have to have
all of that on hand all the time. So narrow down your menu and if you make some
changes or add to it, maybe you can take away some of the things that you
initially started or take away. Some products that don't sell very well but
always keep your S your menu selection kind of to a minimal, at least when you
first start because that way you can build on it.
If you're, if you're getting success and you're getting a
lot of business and a lot of foot traffic in your shop, you can always add to
it. But from the gate, from the get go, don't overdo it. Okay. So we got, uh,
number three. So number two, insurance permits and inspections. Keep this in
mind on an annual basis. Normally your insurance renews or you've got permits
every new annually, and you've got inspections that may be either every month
or maybe every six months or every year or so. But keep in mind the expenses
for all of things and the insurance and permits and things for your, that never
goes away. Of course, that's pretty much a fixed expense that you're going to
incur every year. But I'm saying this so you can keep in mind putting aside the
money that you need to maintain all of those different permits and the
different certifications and certificates from the County, the city, the state,
and all of that good stuff.
So that is something that we definitely learned about when
we first dove into this. There is quite a few, uh, that's going to be dependent
upon the city and the County that you ran. Of course, even your state, um, as
far as how many different permits and insurances and different things that
you're going to have to have. But they all cost money and it's normally done
either, um, every six months or every 12 months. So do keep that in mind as
well. So the number one, and I'm getting to a really, really quick, keep this
nice and short and sweet and one thing to keep in mind when you want to start
your own bakery, retail bakery, business number one location. That is something
that we learned big time. The location that we had was good, but it wasn't
great to be honest with you.
Now for us at the time, it was really an issue of the
budget, the type of how much rent that we could get. It was really the only
place that fit our budget at the time. And it worked out for us. Okay. But
there was a ton of obviously better places within the city and within the
County that we were in. But location is so critical. It's so crucial to the
success of a retail bakery. Not one that's online because it's a totally
different business model. But if you're running a retail bakery, I can tell you
firsthand experience, make sure that you have a very busy, a lot of foot
traffic type of shopping center. If you're independent, the building is
separate from a shopping center. Make sure you're in an area that has a lot of
traffic or at least gets a lot of drive by traffic and such.
But you want to make sure that you're out in front of one
of the main roads, main highways, or near something like a mall or close to
them all. Make sure that your location has a lot of foot traffic. Now, the
reason why I say it's different than online because now that we're online, a
hundred percent of our business, uh, through our internet, um, sales, we can be
in a lot of places, uh, basically everywhere, globally we could be anywhere
because we have websites that do that for us. It's a different type of
business. When you're in, you're anticipating and expecting foot traffic and
you've got to have some, you have to have those feet coming through that, that
retail spot. So when you're actually reliant upon the traffic of people coming
into your front door, make sure you're in a highly trafficked area. Okay, so
really quick, I hope that gives you a really quick outline of the top five
things that we've kind of taken away that we've learned from operating our
retail bakery.
Um, definitely something that you have to experience
yourself and of course your experience will be totally different, but these are
the top five things that really had a big impact on the success or the
non-success of your retail bakery. If you want to start one. So if you have any
questions about starting a bakery, please do let me know down below and I'll
get to our subscriber questions. Thank you everybody for all of the questions
that you guys do send in. We try to get to them as quick as we possibly can.
And I will see you guys on our next video.
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