Self-Serve Bakery: A New (Better?) Way

what does "Self-serve bakery" mean?

Glad you asked, let me tell you.

We’ve been utilizing our porch area as an after-hours self-serve of our packaged baked goods.  Last week, I put out a new sidewalk sign that now advertises “self-serve bakery”, and this question has come up a number of times since and we’ve seen an up-tick in people’s use of it since.

It’s been going well, and we’ve been working behind the scenes on optimizing the whole thing to a really great experience, an experience that can pretty much replace the case experience of our storefront.  Because, SURPRISE, that’s what we are doing.

Here’s what the hours will look like starting Wednesday 6/18:

Self-serve Porch Hours: 

EVERY DAY 7am - 8pm

Doorbell Hours (this is when we are guaranteed available for service/help):

Monday - Saturday 8am - 4pm

Full Storefront Hours:

Saturday 8am - 3pm

Now, I know that’s a big change. Stick with me.

Here’s the thing: unless the cases are being emptied or almost emptied every day, they are a dreadful way to store baked goods.  Instead of going into packaging at their optimal state, they sit out in a very air-loose setting for a number of hours before being packaged up. While visually a really lovely experience, in almost every other way, it’s deeply inefficient and also bad for the product itself. Because each customer interaction is pretty demanding, as it requires on-the-spot intensive packaging, it has proven to be really disruptive to our production in the kitchen.  We do things the most labor-intensive way possible - small batches and all from scratch, so constantly stopping to wait on you folks makes things even less efficient.  We simply do not get enough walk-in business to justify a person completely dedicated to customer service, but then really struggle to keep up in the kitchen when someone is trying to produce while also waiting on customers.  

Making the switch to having only self-serve pre-packaged goodness available most of the time has been a very hard-fought decision.  Presence matters deeply - we want to be here in every way.  We want to be extremely accessible.  We want to surprise and delight you with our product and the whole experience around it.  Our personal connection to you all matters so much. This idea only worked for me when we solved the potential problem of disconnection, and I think we have!

While we’re putting the simple act of retrieving and paying for baked goods in your hands (which covers 95% of our interactions), we are still here for all the other ways you might need us, and even more often than before.  We will have “Doorbell Hours” Monday - Friday 8am - 4pm, with a doorbell to ring and the windows to the inner part of the bakery open.  Need to chat with someone about an order you’d like to place? Need help with your check-out process? Have a question about ingredients or flavors? Wanna pay in cash but don’t have exact and need change?  Wanna say hi and have a chat?  Just ring the doorbell and we will pop right out happily. 

Did I also mention that there will be fresh product on the porch more days than before?  That’s right - sticky buns aren’t just a Wednesday - Saturday thing anymore.  Our single-day pastries will be baked almost every day. No more waiting til Wednesday to get your faves! 

Now, I am still a believer in the full bakery experience.  Walking up to a case, picking out your goods, getting in-person service - this is something I love and believe in as a wonderful vehicle of vibrancy and delight.  This will still be available on Wednesdays (at the Lewisburg Farmer’s Market), and on Saturdays (in our storefront).

In summation, here’s what to expect:

It’s Monday morning, you have a hankering for a sticky bun.  You walk down to the bakery and let yourself in the front door.  The windows are open and you can hear music playing and see someone in the kitchen. There’s a pump pot of drip coffee on the windowsill and table with the freshest stickies packaged up in singles and doubles in tamper-proof packaging in front of you.  You grab the barcode scanner sitting next to the check-out station, pick up a sticky bun and scan it, wander over to the discount shelf and see a pack of cookies that are calling your name, scan that too and add it to your stack of stuff. Then you notice the cupcakes in the fridge - singles and assortments - and remember it’s your co-worker’s birthday.  You mutter I think I’m gonna need a bag to yourself then notice them hanging on the wall.  You select a cupcake, scan that too, then decide it’s probably time to go before you get carried away.  Take your bag of goods over to the check out station, set the barcode scanner back on its dock, and then see all your scanned items rung up with a total ready to go. Decide how you wanna pay, move through the prompts, tap your card, and head out.  You get 2 steps out of the bakery before you pull that sticky bun out of your bag and crack the seal.

Sounds kinda nice, right?

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but what was wrong with the other way?

Here’s the hard truth of it all: if the way we were doing things before was working, we wouldn’t be making this change.  In a lot of ways, I’ve been looking back at 2020 and remembering how much we had to pivot with the pandemic making our regular modes of service impossible.  While the force pushing us here is more about efficiency than safety, it is just as urgent a choice for us.  You all went with us then and showed us incredible support and willingness to flex with us, and I am asking the same of you now.  I’m asking you to give this a chance, show us some grace as we work out the kinks, and give us kind and honest feedback as we give this a try.

In 2016 when 24-year-old me was dreaming, I imagined a vibrant place in our community that could hire generously, be open regularly, and have goodness at the center of its product and presence in the community.  A bakery seemed like the perfect format for that.  As a person with no business experience and no baking experience prior to 2016 besides what I picked up by osmosis of being the kid of talented people, let’s just say the learning curve has been steep.

And I wasn’t wrong in some ways.  A bakery is a good format for vibrancy and goodness, but I chose the most labor-intensive way to go about it - all from scratch.  As the demand on the bakery grew, so did the team, and so did payroll, and so has our need to sell more baked goods to keep up with payroll and all our other expenses.  The last few years, I think it’s safe to say I’ve failed to grow this to a sustainable place, but I always thought the miracle of consistent cash flow was right around the corner somewhere if we could just hang on a little longer. This year has shattered my confidence that more sales are around the corner and a break will come, and it actually seems like folks are holding onto their dollars more tightly.  I am simply out of time and resources to keep floating a sinking ship.

I’m cornered into facing the hard facts here: something’s gotta change.

I heard someone say once that a small business doesn’t just fail - the owner just decides to give up.  Now, I would finish that last phrase differently because I think the implication of “giving up” is inherently negative, and I don’t think it has to be. The owner just decides it’s not healthy for their family or their life anymore.  The owner just decides to pursue other things.  The owner finds a better opportunity.  But the core of the message remains true in all those circumstances: If there’s a will, there’s a way.  That way may be bumpy and new and scary and have high costs to time and energy, but there’s always a way.

Anyway, that idea has stuck with me so deeply.  The reality is, there is always another approach, another thing to try, another day to pick yourself up.  Sure, at some point, the wisest move is to close shop and move on, and I honestly have nothing but the deepest respect and compassion for the small business owners who are backed into the same corner I’m in and decide it’s just time to call it.  In some ways, I believe that decision takes an incredible amount of resolve and courage.  I have nothing but respect for anyone who steps into small business, no matter where it takes them in the long run.

But as for me? I don’t think I’m done yet, and after a ton of complicated number-crunching and decision-making and advice-seeking, I’ve landed on an approach I’m asking y’all to come along with me on. Throughout the week, we are outsourcing the simple act of retrieving and paying for baked goods to you, the customer.  We will be self-serve all day every day, with the exception of Wednesdays at our Lewisburg Farmer’s Market stand and on Saturdays in our bakery storefront.

The truth is, while this business has a near-decade under its belt, that doesn’t make it a permanent fixture in this community just because it survived its first 5 years.  If you want a small business like ours to continue, I’m gonna need y’all to show up with intention.

I’m going into this reformatting of how we operate with cautious optimism.  I am in a lot of ways deeply sad and discouraged, and I’ve had to let go members of my team who I value deeply because payroll has just been taking too large a chunk for this to work at all. By far my worst day as a business owner was decided to downsize my team.  I’ve sat with cutting out a lot of parts of the business in hopes to allow us to work more efficiently with a small but mighty team, and this is just where I’ve landed.  It does feel defeating, because my vision for vibrancy has always meant walk-in business. But also, I am hopeful y’all will embrace this new format, that we will find a new rhythm, and that we can make something actually really cool that puts fresher better goodness more conveniently in your mouths more regularly.

Thank you for being here, reading this all, and supporting us all this time.  You are, after all, why we think this is worth continuing.