If you lived in a small town, with a population between 5,000-10,000, could that sized town support an independent bakery? A bake shop bakery, in its own storefront?
If you did run this kind of business in a small town, how do you keep baked goods in stock and fresh, without wasting a lot of the product? You would need to have enough of a selection so that someone wandering in would have a choice of items, and yet if you don’t sell everything in a few days, what do you do with the stale goods? Baked goods are best fresh.
I don’t currently live in a small town, and I don’t often go into a stand-alone bakery.
I live in a town with a population of under 1,000 people, and we have two bakeries. One is a standard sort of bakery with a small variety of breads and rolls, savory pastries (pies & etc), plus some pastries, cakes and muffins, and the other is a more up-market bakery which sells only sourdough bread and some specialist cakes.
The sourdough bakery is only open three days a week (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) to cater to tourists and weekend populations (my town is in a popular tourist area, and there are a number of people who have holiday or “weekend farms” here). It has also started selling its breads through a variety of outlets in nearby towns and farmer’s markets.
The other bakery makes less specialised products, but makes things in small batches, so that if you go in the late afternoon you’ll find there’s not a lot of choice left in either breads or pastries. That’s probably a good way of ensuring that not a lot is wasted, and since the customers are all locals, you know that if you want a wider choice you need to shop in the morning.
Both places have a sort of cafe option where you can buy a cup of tea or coffee and have a cake or pastry on the premises, and I think the bakery which is open during the week also makes sandwiches for lunchtime.
I suspect that the reason the town can support two bakeries is because this is a rural area with a lot of farmers and farm-associated businesses, in both the town limits and outlying areas, which means that a reasonable number of the population don’t commute elsewhere to work, and even during the week there are tourists which increases the customer base.
I would think it would depend on the town. If there are a number of tourists coming through, well then it just might. The types of residents would be a factor as well. What is the average income of the locals? If the town has a low standard income, I would think that the locals would be more likely to buy any treats from a grocery store rather than splurging on the good stuff. I also think that if sandwiches or small meals are offered too it might do better than just a bakery.
But then again IANABaker
Which as I see in preview has already been covered.
Does your small town have a Wal-Mart? If so, the bakery went out of business 6 months after the Wal-Mart opened.
Assuming the bakery survived, the owner comes in at about 4:00 a.m. He bakes a few loaves of white, rye and whole wheat; a few dozen cookies and a couple of cakes; and a bunch of donuts. The donuts are sold out by 11:00 a.m.
Anything fancier than that, you’ll have to special-order.
It is called OJT, i.e. On The Job Training.
You will learn rapidly what is in demand and sells well, what is not. You adjust your selection and amounts to produce daily.
Overage is sold as “day old” at a discount.
I used to work in a small bakery, in a town of about 5000, and they supplied home-style bread and pastries to about 7-8 stores/restaurants within about an hour’s radius.I’m sure the stuff they sold in-store couldn’t have been more than 20-25% of their total production.
That bakery is still quite successful…
Some friends own a bakery, and they too sell most of their production to other businesses.
Like:
local restaurants/cafes/coffee shops.
gas stations/convenience stores (you didn’t think they actually baked those items behind that gas station, did you?)
hospital, nursing home, and school cafeterias.
About the non-sold baked goods, they have arrangements with local restaurants who buy them as ‘day-old’ for use in dishes where they work: garlic toast, rusks, bread pudding, stuffing, etc. Can even use them in those sandwiches that are covered in gravy & mashed potatoes (roast beef commercial).
They even sell their baked goods that are several days old! A local farmer feeds it to the poultry he raises.
A friend of mine owns a bakery in a small town (about 1200 people).
He bakes everything fresh daily, (except for Sunday and Monday, when he’s closed). Basically, he has a pretty good idea of how much of each product he can expect to sell in a given day, and makes that amount.
Quite a bit of his business is selling to local restraunts, the local hospital, etc. (one burger stand orders around 200 dozen hamburger buns a week). These places all have standing orders. People can also call in ahead with orders (and are in fact encouraged to do so, I think he might even give a bit of discount for items ordered more then 2 days in advance).
He starts working about 8 p.m. and goes until he’s done (which can be as early as 3 a.m., or as late as 10 a.m. depending on the order volume. I think during graduation season last year he had to work something like 22 hours to get all of the orders completed)
And believe me, nothing tastes better then a freshly fried dounut at 2:30 a.m. on your way home from the bar.
I am a manager for an…ummm large “bread company”/bakery/cafe…and I was also a Baker for them as well as in another smaller establishment, could/can it be done, the question has been answered above, YES.
Even the subquestions have been answerd, though none gave my companies complete answer…diligently watch your daily/hourly production and the donate all leftover products (bakery, pasteries and bread) at end of the day to local food pantries and shelters.
Works for us…should work on a smaller scale too, it’s not like we invented good, fresh bread, we just make it readily available…
I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that nearly every village in the UK will have its own bakery and larger towns will have their own chains, i.e. Greenhalgh’s in Bolton and Pooles in Wigan.
I used to live in small city (pop ~3,000) that had a bakery - I don’t know how well they did but they are still in buisiness (I don’t know when the started, but they have been in buisiness at least 15 years).
On the other hand, I live in a bigger city (pop ~5,000) and it has no bakery - maybe because the city of ~50,000 is only 5 miles away (the smaller city is farther away from anything and is the county seat)
