5 things I would do if I was starting a micro bakery in 2024

Starting and running my first ever business in 2020 has been the steepest and most rewarding learning curve in my life filled with many highs and many lows. Here are 5 things I'd do if I began again

Starting and running my first ever business, Lily’s Loaf in 2020 has been the steepest and most rewarding learning curve in my life filled with many highs and many lows. My mission with Lily's Loaf now is to not only provide inspiration via recipes and my content online, but to also help guide you if you are considering starting your own micro bakery business too! So without further ado, here are 5 things that I would do if I was starting a micro bakery in 2024:

1. Hire an assistant baker: even on a part time basis. This would help massively with sharing the workload, it would mean you could produce double quantities, help with washing up, have someone to chat to as I found it was often really difficult taking on the entire workload alone physically & mentally too as it was often lonely for me working from 4am in the morning all day! I wasn’t able to do this as I operated from my home & didn’t have the luxury or space to do so with others working here.

2. Focus on the business model that works for you: for me this was a combination of supplying wholesale clients, local customers by bike (labour intensive & time intensive- I would scrap this in hindsight), and trading at farmer’s markets. Wholesale was the most reliable form of income as I was producing higher volume compared to delivering one loaf to one customer. Farmer’s markets are awesome for brand exposure & quick cash if you have good weather and footfall! 

3. Focus more on profitable items: this often looks like focusing on smaller hand held items such as buns/ sweet items/ pastries that customers grab and go. This works well because a) you can produce more in a smaller space b) they are often more profitable in terms of margins c) they take less time to bake and produce than lengthy products like sourdough. 

4. go and train with other bakeries on bakery stages! Every single time I went on a stage it really energised me on so many levels & I would often leave having learnt so much in terms of my baking skills & really understanding how their business works from the inside out. It’s also free compared to baking/ culinary courses!

5. what is your end goal? Is this a lifestyle business or a weekend side hustle? Or is this a full time business & the micro bakery serves as a stepping stone towards a bricks and mortar site? These decisions will inform how much you work, the equipment you may need & how to best spend your time.

Please do feel free to always send me an email if you have any further queries about your micro bakery journey or any of my recipes, I am here to help you!

All the very best,

Lily x