KEEP IT SIMPLE
One of the beauties of a home bakery is that you don’t need a heck of a lot of equipment to get you started. Just a stove, a few pans, some ingredients and that “special” recipe. If you want to get a little fancier, you’ll find a timer (to keep you from over or under cooking an oven full of goodies on those busy days when you’re preoccupied with more than you can remember) well worth its small investment. As is an oven thermometer if, like us, you have a temperamental stove.
Whatever you feel you need to launch your enterprise, don’t forget to check the thrift stores first when you go shopping. We’ve had great luck finding everything we’ve wanted secondhand. We even bought an old Mixmaster for just $4.95!
THINK CLEAN, THINK QUALITY
When you operate a family-sized home business, you quickly realize that there’s no one to pass the buck to when you goof something up. You-or your family-alone are responsible for any slipshod work and, if you expect your enterprise to grow and thrive, you’re well advised to set high standards for yourself and to constantly make every effort you can to exceed them.
For example: If you, as we do, shell the nuts which go into your baked goods make double danged sure that you do the job with utmost care. People are finicky-and rightfully so-about the food they eat and, especially in today’s hard times, they want value for their money. Even one small chip of a shell, passed over and left in with the nut meats in one of your pies or loaves of bread, could be enough to turn off your best customer.
Another example: Don’t be too cheap to invest a few cents in giving your products a quality image. Plastic bags and even cake boxes can be purchased from paper wholesalers for just a penny or two apiece. The cost, in short, is hardly anything at all compared to the atmosphere of care and the “guarantee” of cleanliness that such packaging adds to your goods.
HOW TO PRICE YOUR PRODUCTS
If your baked goods are really above average, don’t underestimate them. We’ve found (to our pleasant surprise), that the individual or family with something tasty to offer has no trouble commanding a fair price for his, her, or their products. There’s so much prepackaged and machine-made food on the market these days that genuinely mouthwatering goods are welcomed with open arms. If what you have to sell is really in demand, don’t be afraid to ask a premium price for it.
The amount we charge for our pies and nut loaves varies from time to time, depending on the actual cost of the ingredients we use. As a rule of thumb, though, we follow a pricing schedule that leaves us with $1.00 after all expenses for each pie and a net of 80¢ over and above expenses on every loaf of nut bread.
This clears us $20.00 or more on most days and still leaves plenty of room for our buyers to make a fair profit when they resell our products to their customers.
WE WORK FOR MORE THAN MONEY
No, we’re not getting rich in the bakery business. But then, we didn’t set out to become rich. We’re quite content as long as our little home enterprise guarantees our day-to-day survival, keeps us relatively independent of The System, and leaves us free to pursue other interests.
We also feel that our business “pays” us with more than money. Shelling all the nuts we use, for instance, is the most time-consuming part of our operation and, in many ways, the most satisfying. All three McQuarries-Marie, me, and our ten-year-old son, Wesley-thoroughly enjoy sitting around the living room fireplace in the evening cracking and picking nuts, sharing the day’s experiences, and listening to KPFA (our area’s “alternative” radio station). It gives us an idea of what family life must once have been like: closely knit, with each member having the satisfaction of actively contributing to the general welfare.
Nope. We probably won’t stay in the family baking business forever. But, yep! Now that our walnut pie has shown us the way to . economic liberation, we intend to always earn our daily breadwhile we draw our family closer together-with a do-it-ourselves enterprise that we completely own and control.
Source: www.motherearthnews.com