29.03.2024

How to open a bakery?

Baking quality and delicious bread is not difficult. The main thing is to stick to technology. At the initial stage it is much more important to find your own distinctive feature, a feature that will allow you to stand out from your competitors and attract customers.

Bakery is a highly competitive type of business. Here you can meet and large mastodons, to some extent preserved since perestroika times, and joint ventures with foreign companies, and medium-sized bakeries, and even micro-bakeries with a staff of 3-5 people.

To open a bakery , survive in a competitive struggle and grow, you need to stand out. Find your own difference, chip, concept . How to do it? Dance from customers, from the market.

For this, first of all, study your potential customers:

  • Their views, preferences concerning bread and bakery products, food, health and lifestyle.
  • Geography of residence – where they live, in what part of the city.
  • From what they are the social environment, the level of income.

If to speak easier, get into the skin of your customers and then you will understand what they want and what does not.
The second step is to study competitors:

  • Who are they? How many are already working?
  • What customers are served? Do you have the same customers? Or is there a possibility of nesting for you?
  • What range do they offer? What do they lack, according to customers? What is the concept of your competitors?

Analyze the collected information and find your unique proposal-something that no one else offers to your customers or does it is not effective enough.

We have sufficiently studied our target audience. And they made a bet on the sorts of bread, which are few in stores, or they do not exist at all. Along with the standard loaves, we offered rye bread with a lower content of wheat flour, bread made with buckwheat flour. Such sorts of bread are less caloric, they contain less starch, more protein and other useful substances. As a result, the body easily digests these types of bread, and therefore they are considered dietary. We sold «healthy and easy bread». This was our distinguishing feature, which allowed us to develop.

Investment size

If there is no experience of baking business, it is better to start with the opening of a mini-bakery. Premises of 200-220 m2 for such a case will be enough.

What will investments go to:

  • Rental of premises, its repair, utilities.
  • Collection of documents
  • Purchase of a set of equipment, its installation and launch.
  • Purchase of products for baking bread for the first time.
  • Transport for delivery. Initially, you can rent a car in order not to buy a new car.
  • Advertising and marketing.
  • Consulting of the engineer-technologist.
  • Salary to employees for 1-2 months.

Hilola Radzhabova

co-owner and head of Bakual Bakery bakery

If we talk in figures, then to open a mini-bakery for 200 m2 will require about 3 million rubles. Of these, the main part – 2,2-2,3 million rubles will go to equipment, its installation and repair of the premises.

The machine for delivery at the beginning should be rented in order to spend less. For advertising and marketing, I recommend allocating 5% of the total amount.

The rest of the investment will be required for:

  • Rental of premises and utilities in the first months
  • Collection of documents
  • Purchase of products for 7-10 days

Consulting of the engineer-technologist and wages to employees.

Step-by-step instruction

To open a bakery you need to go step by step through these stages:

  • Preparing for the opening – the study of the market, customers, competitors. On the basis of the collected information we create our own concept, due to which we will stand out and attract customers.
  • Company registration. Organizational and legal form of LLC.
  • Rental of premises, its repair and finishing.
  • Obtaining positive conclusions from the SES and the fire department about the compliance of the premises with sanitary and hygienic standards and fire safety standards. At the same time, we hire an experienced process engineer who will help in the purchase of equipment, its installation, start-up, training of personnel in the rules of working with equipment. Together with an engineer-technologist we order equipment.
  • Installation of equipment, commissioning.
  • The first trial bread baking on new equipment. Obtaining a certificate of conformity and a hygienic certificate for your products.

Comments of the laboratory assistant bakery Bogiston- Nizamutdinova Dinars:

A certificate of conformity is a document confirming the compliance of baked bread with state standards. We in our practice receive certificates of compliance through a state accredited certification center.Hygienic certificate (from July 1, 2010 in the countries of the Customs Union was replaced with a  certificate of state registration .) – this is a document confirming the conformity of products to sanitary standards. Issued by the State Sanitary and Epidemiological Service.

In parallel, we are preparing to launch an advertising campaign.

  • We hire employees, train them, bake the first batch of products.
  • We launch an advertising campaign and sell goods to retail chains and points.

How to work with staff?

Pick a team that works consistently and effectively, at the initial stages it will be difficult. But you can accelerate this process and pass with fewer losses if you competently approach the selection and adaptation of new employees.

If you do not pay enough attention to work with staff, then very soon the staff will change like gloves. And this will inevitably lead to significant losses.

Judge for yourself: you need to spend time to select an employee, his training, adaptation. While the employee is mastering, the productivity of his work will be low, he will make mistakes. And it will be a very sorry time spent on the employee, if he does not pass the trial period and will leave. And imagine if this situation continues from month to month. How long will you last?

We did not immediately manage to build our own team, which would work effectively. Over time, we developed our selection criteria. The main among them is the conformity of their profession, their desire to grow professionally and their love for their cause, a spark in their eyes.

If this internal fire is not there, then whatever conditions you create the employee, he will not feel satisfaction from his work. And sooner or later will leave or work exclusively for the sake of money. We do not need such robots. Therefore, the love of one’s work is one of the important criteria in the selection of employees.

After the selection there is a trial period. During it we look at the following qualities of the employee:

  • Speed ​​of the work. Does the employee succeed in following his working schedule.
  • How it works: Does it observe technology, does it use equipment correctly? Finds a common language with colleagues.
  • Stress resistance.
  • Endurance.
  • Learning. We regularly expand the assortment, bake bread according to new recipes. Therefore, the employee must be able to learn new methods of work.

In terms of motivation, besides bonuses, it is very important to build healthy human relations. A person must feel that he is needed and appreciated here.

How to build advertising and marketing?

It will not be easy for a new player to enter the competitive market of bakery business. Retail points do not really want to work with you, t. You do not know the consumers.
Therefore, when building an advertising campaign, the main efforts should be directed at ensuring that consumers learn about your product and brand. You can use different channels of advertising and communication to solve this problem.

And in order not to reinvent the wheel, let’s listen to what the manager of the bakery Bogiston says about this: Sadikov Akmal:
» Small bakeries that have just opened, it is better to conduct the promotion of their products in retail outlets or networks. This is a relatively affordable and effective method of promotion.
End consumers go to supermarkets for shopping and are more willing to take the news at this moment. When you deliver your message through other advertising channels, the attention of the customers is scattered and in a short time they will forget what you advertised. Plus the promotion is not so expensive, the main costs will go to agree with the administration of supermarkets . «

In addition to promotion, I would recommend including social networks, especially if you have a unique offer or a narrower niche.

And, as a channel for collecting feedback, social networks are convenient and accessible. Feedback should be constant and through different channels: ask consumers about their product, talk with sellers in supermarkets about how your product leaves, how customers respond about it.

Make an effort to stand on the «golden shelf» in supermarkets. It may not work out right away, but the result is often worth the effort.

Having understood what works and what does not, you can connect other advertising channels.

A place

Several basic requirements are placed on the location of the bakery:

  • Stable supply of water, electricity, gas.
  • Convenience of loading and unloading.
  • Proximity to points of realization.
  • The room must be dry.
  • High ceilings and a good ventilation system. the bakeries are hot.

In addition to the bakery itself, I recommend opening your own store to sell your products. Here you can present the entire range, communicate directly with your customers and increase their loyalty to your brand.

If you are going to open your own store, you should choose a crowded place with good traffic. Otherwise, sales in the store will be weak.

Documentation

It is simpler and better to register a company in the form of «OOO». To open a bakery and sell their products will need to collect the following documents:

  • A package of documents for the registration of LLC.
  • Conclusion from the SES on the compliance of the premises with sanitary and hygienic standards.
  • Conclusion from the fire department on the compliance of the premises with fire safety standards.
  • Contract for the lease of premises.
  • Certificate of conformity for products.
  • Hygienic certificate for products. About the hygienic certificate and the certificate of conformity we wrote in detail above.

Check-list of opening

  • Market research. Development of own concept.
  • Company registration.
  • We choose a room and conclude a lease. We carry out repair and decoration work.
  • We hire an engineer-technologist as a consultant and together with him we purchase equipment.
  • We receive positive conclusions from SES and firefighters.
  • We install the equipment.
  • We do trial baking.
  • We receive a certificate of conformity and a hygienic certificate for our products.
  • We buy products for baking bread for the first 7-10 days.
  • Preparing for an advertising campaign.
  • We negotiate with retail outlets and networks on supplies and promotion.
  • Hiring of employees, training.
  • Bake the first batch of bread.
  • We launch advertising and sell baked bread.

Is it profitable to open

In the bakery business there is a clear seasonality, which is associated with the diet of people at different times of the year. So, in the cold period, i.e. From autumn to spring, demand for bakery products is increasing. In a warm and hot period, i.e. From spring to autumn, demand falls on the contrary.

Profitability and Return on Business

The profitability of bakery production depends, first of all, on the volume of output and sales. Each bakery has its own threshold for production, below which the bakery is not profitable to work. If the volume of production and sales exceeds this threshold, the net profit, net of all expenses, incl. taxes is 10-15%.

If the volume of bread baking and its sale is all right, then you can expect a profit of 15%. Maybe less depends on the type of bread and margins on it.
Payback in each case is calculated individually: for someone to start may require less investment, someone for development can take more time. On average, the mini-bakery pays off within 2-2.5 years. But again, the payback period can be stretched depending on various factors and conditions.

What are the risk factors?

As in any business, baking business has its own risk factors. We list the main of them:

  • Deterioration of product quality.
  • Retail points did not have time to realize bread.
  • Manufacturing defect.
  • Ineffective advertising.

Our experts will tell how these risks affect the business and how to overcome them.

The quality of the product may decrease for various reasons. All of them boil down to the same denominator: non-compliance with technology. In each case, you need to understand, because of what exactly was not observed technology. After that, we eliminate the cause and continue to control the production. Of course, the decline in quality strongly affects the reputation of the company and its revenue. And even if the batch of bread turned out to be of poor quality, you should make every effort to find it in the bakery before shipping to the outlets.

It happens that retail points do not have time to sell the goods. In this case, it is also important to understand why this is happening: perhaps, the preferences of buyers at this point have changed or the point ordered too much bread. Some points return unrealized products to us, and these are direct losses for us, because bread- goods perishables.

To avoid production marriages, each stage of production must be monitored and controlled once more. Do not believe the word to employees and suppliers, and recheck. Defective products are also direct losses. I’ll give an example: say, for one of the bread grades, your net profit is 10%. Today in the bakery one-tenth of this sort of bread came out defective. As a result, your bakery is losing all of today’s profit for this type of bread.

The consequences of ineffective advertising are most striking at the time of the opening of the bakery. Buyers in stores are reluctant to buy out your products, and the funds have already been invested, in addition there are running costs. In this case, it is necessary to learn and understand the reasons for the ineffectiveness of advertising, to make work on the errors and launch the second advertising campaign. To do this, initially the advertising budget should be formed with a margin

  1. The bakery business is highly competitive. Without its unique concept, it will be difficult for new players in this industry to move forward.
  2. It is necessary to constantly monitor the quality of products.
  3. Without creating a coherent and efficient team, it will be difficult to organize the production process.
  4. Because The bakery belongs to the food industry, you need to get a number of documents from the SES.
  5. Net profit of production is 10-15% of turnover. Payback 2-2,5 years. This period may increase.
  6. It is necessary to take into account risk factors (quality, returns, marriage, ineffective advertising) and be ready to deal with them.

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