You open a bakery because you love to bake, right?
Wrong. You open a bakery because you want to make a living baking. Which means you have to actually sell the things you bake.
If you just want to bake, bake at home for your friends and family. You won't need a business license, permits, insurance, a telephone, internet or sales and marketing plan. You know, all that stuff that costs money and takes up time that you would rather spend baking.
Case in point:
One of our customers has a daughter in college in another state. She was participating in (Sorority) Rush last month. I'm pretty sure the official name is "Formal Recruitment."
She wanted to send a big box of cookies to the Sorority her daughter hoped to pledge. She would have called us and mailed the cookies, but we were closed for winter break.
So instead she went searching the Internet for a bakery in the college town.
She found one whose website reminded her of us, so she called to see if they could make some custom cookies to be delivered the next day. The bakery told her they were small and needed more time for a custom order.
We would have said the same thing, so I just listened and nodded.
So she continued searching for other bakeries but found none that could help her. She called the first bakery back. Did they have any cookies on hand that they could just box up and deliver with a card? The bakery asked how many cookies she wanted to buy, and she said five dozen.
"Oh my gosh, that would clean us out" was the reply.
To which our customer responded "and your point is?"
I had to laugh as I assured her that I would have GLADLY sold her our last five dozen cookies.
Rule #1:
You bake cookies to sell, to make money, to pay your bills and yourself, so you can bake more cookies. Or, you bake cookies once. Keep them in the case forever. Until they go bad and you go out of business. Which should take about a month.
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