How to start a bakery is a question that cannot be answered in one sentence. Bakery knowledge and experience are the most important factors for success. Besides that, lots of decisions need to be made like the business model, the product category, the level of bakery automation and bakery technique. Read more about these topics and about the investment angle and the first steps that you can take.
Looking to start a bakery and don’t know where to start?
The word bakery is a term that encloses a tremendous range of business models. Which business model suits the maternity of your focus market best? A couple of business models:
- From retail to wholesale or online
- B2B to B2C or B2B2C
- Franchised shops to licensed manufacturing
Bakery product category
The matrix gets even more confusing when you start thinking about the product category range that you would like to tap into for any business model:
- Breads and staple sandwich carriers; toast bread, baguettes, burger buns, hot dog rolls, pita bread, lavash, taftoon, tortillas.
- Pastries ; croissants, fatayer, danishes, puff pastries, filled rolls, brioches, donuts, mandazis.
- Cakes: muffins, cookies, brownies, pound cakes, dorayaki cake, cloud dakes, decorated cakes.
- Pies: sweet tarts, American pies, savory quiches.
- Meal replacers: pizzas, fatayer, manakish.
- Crackers: biscuits, pita chips, pretzel chips, breadsticks, grissinis, twists.
- And the list goes on…
Add to the above matrix a new dimension of bakery technology adoption. Which technology should be used in each case?
- Daily fresh
- Medium shelf life, ambient
- Long shelf life, ambient
- Chilled
- Frozen raw dough
- Frozen par-baked
- Frozen fully baked
Bakery automation level
Which level of automation do we need? Do we need production flexibility or efficiency?
- Artisan bakery, manually assisted set-up
- Semi-automated
- Fully-automated
- Robotized
- Or a mix and match of the above
Bakery technique
Which bakery technique do we use for the determined product and the needed capacity? How about the quality of the bakery machinery? Does it need to be A, B or C quality machinery? Which suppliers of bakery machines meet the demand, the budget and suit your business? There are numerous possibilities. A solution with used bakery machines is also possible, or a combination of new and used bakery equipment, a so-called hybrid solution.
The bakery investment angle
Integrated Bakery offers a wide range of possibilities when it comes to investment sizes. Our approach for individual investors and/or corporates can be:
- Either build around a customized bakery solution that suits an investor’s profile, a defined investment size or a capacity requirement
- Or build around a pre-engineered bakery concept proposition that is already needed in a specific market
Integrated Bakery has planned, engineered and executed portfolios of investments from as low as € 100.000 stretching up to € 25.000.000 for production equipment. Either way, the technical solutions will be built around one question: “What makes profitable sense?”.
What do you have in mind?
- An artisan type of bakery?
- A semi-automated bakery?
- A fully automated bakery?
- A hybrid, tailor-made bakery?
Nonetheless every opportunity holds some elements of risk in it. We work hard on several fronts to mitigate the risks and make sure that the invested capital into the production line(s) is worth every penny spent, keeping an eye on the ROI.
Risk mitigation perspectives
- Creativity/Out of the box thinking: a key feature built in our DNA, that allows our engineers to think creatively in a multitude of ways, performing the same quantitative and qualitative goals you aim to get out of your bakery industry. This is to make sure that the created solution imbeds risk mitigation elements, granting further comfort for your bakery business.
- Source-fullness: our long history in the industry and exposure to global brands and players in the segment allow us to stretch our minds into a wider pool of options, to match the need with the potential solutions. Second hand (or pre-owned) industrial lines are also, as mentioned earlier, an asset that we can capitalize on to lower a specific Capex of your venture.
- The Growing model: whenever applicable, we will propose a phased investment on the production solution. Be it on the variety of products offered to the market or on the aimed capacity, we can include a variety of solutions driven by flexibility with a longer-term vision, to grow with the same assets into a larger industrial size facility.
The first steps to take
Our job is to help the entrepreneur to oversee the enormous possibilities, which goes beyond the possibilities of an original equipment manufacturer who is bound to sell what their factory can produce. Together we can define the need in terms of product, capacity and investment size. If a bakery feasibility study or a bakery business plan is needed, we can take care of that as well.
We can start developing a conceptual technical solution with an indication of the needed budget. These steps all belong to the planning phase of the project. If you want to continue, we will enter the execution phase in which bakery equipment procurement, installation management, testing, commissioning, training etcetera are steps to take.
The need of the project is always different from one project to the other; from capacity expansion to unique product development, bakery automation, shelf life challenge, process optimization to enhance profitability. These are challenges that our bakery experts love to address.
Take the first steps by thinking of:
- Which business model is most desirable for you
- Which product range is required and its relevant output/capacity
- The project location
- Which investment size is most comfortable for you
Contact one of our experts to share your questions and ideas. You are most welcome for an informative meeting.
