By Mashum Mollah
For those who love baking, starting your own bakery can be an exciting prospect. It’s one of the rare times when people get to follow their passion. But setting up a bakery might not be as simple as you imagine. More effort goes to the process than you may think. If you are unprepared, you may find the task of running a bakery quite overwhelming. To make sure that you know what you are signing up for, we give you an overview of the most important factors that you need to keep in mind when setting up a commercial bakeshop.
Factors to Consider Before Setting up a Bakery:
The total cost of operations:
There are a lot of small costs associated with setting up a bakery. You need to make sure that you have taken all of these expenses into account. You will have to include the wholesale purchase cost of ingredients such as flour, eggs, and sugar, as well as the equipment that you are going to need. Some of the necessary equipment will include industrial spiral mixers and ovens, which can rack up high electricity charges. You must also include the cost of labor and the amount that you have to pay in rent, along with transportation and other minor expenses.
The amount of time needed to break even:
This part is slightly tricky to figure out. To estimate how long it’s going to take you to break even, you are going to have to predict the market demand for your product. This will allow you to decide on a price point. From here, you can calculate how much time you are going to need to break even. Be aware that it may take many months and sometimes up to a year. So you should plan accordingly and have enough capital in hand before starting.
Where to source your ingredients from:
Before starting, you will need to make the critical decision about where to source your ingredients from. You will largely have two choices, whether to buy cheaper, lower-quality ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup in bulk or pay a premium for higher-quality products such as brown sugar. In general, you will find that using natural, good-quality ingredients differentiates your product from the rest.
How to attract the right consumer group:
Once you have all the basics set for your bakeshop, you should consider who you are going to sell your products to. Your marketing tactics have to be different, based on your competition and target market. If you are going to sell trendy cupcakes, using a channel such as Instagram might work better than handing out fliers. The important thing to remember is to be adaptable to your marketing strategy.
There is a lot more that you have to take into account when starting a bakery. Compliance and hygiene issues, proper safety, packaging, and future expansion plans are all going to play a huge role in your success. To make sure that your business does not stumble after taking a few steps, set up a solid business strategy.
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