Opening Up: Starting Your First Bakery
Last year, a lot of people looked into baking to keep them busy at home. They missed the food they could go purchase every day. They were part of the routine on the way to work or school and back home. This led to those under lockdown making their own versions of the snacks and meals that they badly missed, and freshly baked goods were one of them.
Post-pandemic, these bakers are opening their own place to share their love of bread with the world. If you are one of them and believe that you can make your business thrive, here are some things you need to consider:
Branding Your Bread
First of all, you need to know the kind of market you will cater to. For this, you need to do an inventory of which breads you can bake and which sort of people it attracts. You could try doing a quick survey or use your neighbors as a focus group. It will take some capital to get started for this kind of market research, but without any idea of who you can sell to, it will be more difficult to penetrate the customer base. This makes the venture riskier to pursue.
Aside from baked goods, you can attract customers by developing your establishment to be as comfortable as possible. For example, you can look into an air-conditioning company to install inverters. People looking to get cool while enjoying some freshly baked goods will prefer to go to your shop instead. At the same time, you will be able to enter the market as a high-cost product, justified by your added service of keeping everyone, including your food, chilled. Another advantage is that you’ll be able to maintain a steady temperature in cases where you have icing or frosting on your products.
Sweetening The Deal With Your Suppliers
Inform your suppliers of all the opportunities that a physical store has to offer them. This might allow you to get a good deal on your raw materials and save you capital early on. You can also negotiate lower prices by explaining to them that for your business to work, you are looking into penetrative pricing as a strategy. Penetrative pricing is a method where entrepreneurs enter the market at a price lower than their competitors. It encourages better customer acquisition in the early stages of the venture. That is why there are introductory prices for products.
Suppliers will benefit from this relationship by establishing a reputation to provide a business as legitimate as yours. It will also help with their customer acquisition, which means that they would like you to succeed. A successful venture will also be a regular source of income for them, allowing them to be more comfortable with their production capacity. Therefore, do not hesitate to talk them through your plans and try to bring them along for the ride.
Kneading To Form The Dough
It’s going to take a lot of work to make it all happen. Just as taxing it is to knead dough by hand, starting your first bakery will need plenty of muscle no matter how many mixers you buy. But similar to how preparing your own bread can be rewarding, building a connection between you and your consumers (as well as the money) can be just as satisfying. You will be sharing your love of baking with the neighborhood you set up in while earning a living.
Moreover, your patience in baking will need to spill over to your patience in getting the venture to be profitable. It will take a lot of time and effort to develop a regular customer base, so if it does not work out the first few months, it is okay. So long as you can identify the problems and sort them out early on, staying in the game for as long as possible shows faith in your venture. You already know that bread does not instantaneously become edible once you turn on the oven. It will take a positive and pragmatic person to make their business survive and grow.
Creating food is a fundamental experience that can help everyone appreciate the hard work put into a dish. It is an outlet of emotions, as well as an exercise of one’s capabilities. Aside from feeding others and yourself, you have a life skill that is about to be complemented by relevant entrepreneurial qualities.