Your friends, family, and co-workers always compliment you on your baking skills. Given the opportunity, you’d spend all day, every day making pastries, breads, and other baked goods. If this sounds like you, maybe you’re thinking of opening your own bakery. What should you do next? Here are three tips on getting started in the world of professional baking.
Learn About Food Safety And Other Professional Skills
Bakers who run their own bakeries don’t necessarily need formal training through a culinary school or other training program, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. Of course, you have the option of taking baking classes from a technical school or culinary school, and it may be helpful to take a course in food safety. Some business owners also appreciate having taken math courses, and nutrition courses may also be important to you if nutrition is important to your potential customers.
Learning safety and professional baking skills may also be important to you and your business if you decide to earn a Retail Bakers of America competency certification. While such professional certification isn’t required to own your own bakery, it can show your staff and customers that you’re committed to quality and know what you’re doing. The four different certification levels require various combinations of work experience and, in some instances, formal classroom training.
Invest In Professional Kitchen Equipment
This will depend on your baking needs and the volume of your business, but at the very least you’ll need refrigeration for your perishable ingredients, a place to store your non-perishable ingredients, a dishwasher for clean-up, coolers in which to store your inventory that needs refrigeration, baking ovens, and perhaps one or more large mixers (since there are different types for different jobs).
Some of the equipment you’ll need to run a professional baking kitchen will be mandated by health and safety codes. For other pieces of kitchen and retail display equipment, you’ll have to use your own best judgment and, perhaps, recommendations from fellow baking professionals. Investing in high-quality professional kitchen appliances, like those at Commercial Kitchens, may be a bit of an expense up front, but it pays off in inventory that isn’t lost due to equipment failures, running out of storage space, and other problems you might run into with insufficient appliances.
Develop A Good Idea For Detail
Baking is a business in which a good eye for tiny details is essential. If you’re already receiving rave reviews of your baked goods, you probably already know this. But as a reminder, as the owner of your own bakery, you’ll be responsible for every pastry that browns in the pan too long, every shaped cookie that isn’t quite shaped right, every pie filling that isn’t quite the same color as usual, etc.
In addition to keeping an eye on the baked goods, you’ll also have to keep an eye on the hiring and training of your staff, your budget for supplies, and your inventory of ingredients and of retail products, your prices, and how many goods get baked each day. For those who aren’t detail-oriented by nature or by training, owning a bakery may seem like an overwhelming chore.
Owning your own bakery is a dream you can achieve. First you’ll need to learn some basic culinary, food safety, and workplace safety skills; invest in the appropriate equipment; and keep a close eye on the small details of your business. With these skills, some luck, and a product so delicious it can’t be refused, you’ll do well in the world of retail baking. Perhaps you’ll even do well enough to expand your single bakery into a worldwide chain. Hey, it happened for the cinnamon roll lady.
