April 20, 2023 - 2:12pm
Micro Bakery Production Questions
Hello everyone, new member here. Looking forward to being part of such an amazing community.
These 2 questions are for anyone running a micro bakery.
Q 1. How many loaves a day are you currently baking and what oven are you using to hit those numbers?
I’m hoping to bake 50+ loaves each day while prepping for the next days loaves with one Rofco B40.
My math - 9 x 900g loaves every 45min-hour. While I’m baking (7am-1pm) I’ll be doing my prep.
This would be done 6 days a week.
Q 2. Do you have a subscription service? What percentage of your business would you say it is?
Thanks for anyone who takes the time to respond, very much appreciated.
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1. That is not a trivial amount of bread per day. Are you sure you can sell that much? I have a full size bakery and this time of year we aren’t doing a whole lot more than that. I live in a medium size city. Also factor in packaging time. You may consider a commercial brand of oven. Miwe and bongard have smaller models and as they are Modular, you could get a single deck, and they work like a dream.
2. We do a monthly subscription box and it’s 10% of our revenue, which is quite a lot considering it’s 2 days a month.
I bake primarily for farmers market and am currently a cottage baker at this point but I do use a Rofco B40 so may be able to help a little.
1. During market season, I bake an average of 120 loaves/day once a week plus another 30-40 loaves once a week for a second smaller market in my Rofco. For special events, I have done up to 220 loaves in a day. 120 loaves generally takes me about 6-7 hours of straight baking, with oven loads of twelve 750-gram loaves. This is rather tiring and makes for long days though.
I think what you're proposing for a B40 is certainly doable but might get tiring after awhile and may not be the most efficient in the long run. Perhaps you can start there and save for a deck oven?
2. I don't do any sort of subscription service currently but in the past when I've dabbled in it have found it to be worthwhile. Be sure to price properly.