When you open your own bakery, it can feel like a dream come true. All those years of baking and experimenting with new recipes in the kitchen have all collimated into your very own self-made business. However, when you open your own bakery, you’re also opening your own business.
Managing a business can come with many unanticipated tasks and stress, which makes operating your bakery much more complicated. In this blog, we’ll share a complete guide to opening your own bakery to help you reduce stress and prepare your business for success.
Create Your Business Plan
Before starting any business, it is critical to draft a business plan. Creating a business plan for your bakery is essential for mapping out key strategies so you can ensure your business is sustainable and profitable. This plan will also indicate whether your company will be a retail or wholesale bakery.
A retail bakery is a business that sells products to the average customer in an in-house store. Wholesale bakeries, on the other hand, sell their baked goods to other companies such as restaurants or grocery stores. Before opening a bakery, it’s imperative to identify whether your company is a wholesale or retail business.
Next, you can begin to draft your business’s description and mission statement. These statements should provide a clear image of your bakery’s values and practices. Once the overview of your company has been completed, consider its management and ownership structure. Establishing these core details will better prepare your business for successful and smooth operations.
Lease Your Space
After your business plan has been thoroughly detailed, you can begin to search for your bakery location! There are several different factors to consider when leasing a space for a business.
Where will your bakery be located compared to other nearby bakeries? Are you located in an accessible area for your target audience? Is the rent of your location reasonable? Can you pay it each month? Each of these considerations should play a critical role in determining the final space chosen for your bakery.
Once you’ve leased a space for your bakery, you can begin to design the floor plan for your business. Developing a cohesive and accessible floor plan is essential to making a positive first impression on customers and creating an environment where patrons can feel comfortable and content.
Obtain Necessary Licenses
Whenever you open a business in the foodservice industry, specific licenses and permits are required to help regulate the health and safety of new establishments. The necessary permits or licenses needed before opening new food service businesses differ depending on the state, however. Before opening your business, check the specific requirements of your state to clarify which licenses or permits your business may need to obtain.
Create Your Menu
Now it’s time for the fun part of planning! When you open your bakery, you will have a chance to craft a menu of some of your favorite recipes and desserts. As you draft your menu, remember to include a wide variety of tastes and flavors to optimize the selection of your products.
Identifying your target audience will also help decide which recipes are best for you to feature. For example, if most of your customers are older and prefer more muted tastes, then sugary desserts will probably be less popular. However, if your bakery caters to the tastes of younger customers, then desserts filled with sweet and sour combinations should be highlighted instead.
As you create your bakery menu, also consider what brand-new recipes you can include. Invest some time experimenting with different bakery emulsion flavors to enhance some of your classic recipes into elevated and exciting new treats. Once you have compiled a list of classic, experimental, and wide-ranging desserts, your menu and its items will be ready for future guests.
Order Equipment
Now that you have a full menu ready to serve your customers, you can order the equipment you need to start cooking. When you order your baking equipment, always choose high-quality products made with long-lasting materials. Failing to order quality equipment will directly affect the quality of your baking and most likely lead to higher replacement costs.
You should also remember to order sufficient supplies for cleaning and keeping your storefront and kitchen safe and clean. Once you have all the cooking supplies, ingredients, and tools needed to fill your shop with baked goods, you can hire your staff!
Hire Staff
When customers walk into a new bakery, they like to feel warmly welcomed by the environment and staff they encounter. Hiring a strong team of workers is essential to ensuring that customers receive this welcoming atmosphere. Finding employees who are dedicated, honest, and hardworking is imperative to support your business on the ground floor.
First, conduct extensive interviews to find employees who share similar values to you and your business. Once you’ve hired your staff, designate enough time to train and prepare them for a grand opening. Scheduling ample time to train your team of workers will encourage employees to bond together and help them feel more prepared to meet your expectations.
Set Your Marketing Strategy
One of the last steps in our complete guide to opening your own bakery is to plan a marketing strategy before your grand opening. The goal of marketing your business is to gain customer attention and build anticipation. Finding ways to participate in local business fairs, handing out flyers, and creating an online social media campaign are practical approaches to generating attention toward the opening of your bakery.
Host a Grand Opening
It’s time to open your bakery doors! Host a large, grand opening to invite customers to tour your facility, taste your products, and celebrate your new business!
Opening a bakery is a huge personal and professional accomplishment. Although drafting, planning, and managing a business can be overwhelming or stressful, the time put into these considerations helps to make companies more satisfied and successful.
Here at Get Suckered, we offer a wide range of flavor concentrates and bakery flavor emulsions to help you explore new recipes to add to your bakery menus. To learn more about our flavor products or read through some of our favorite recipes, browse through our website.
