3 Things Every Baker Should do after a holiday sale.
As a Baker a good portion of our business is focused around holidays and special events in our customers lives. And I know its easy to get wrapped up in the hustle and bustle of promoting…. baking… and selling your baked goods around the holidays.
And if you’re like me and tend to push other important “business” tasks to the side lines this post is for for you ! With that being said here are 3 things you should be doing in your business after a major holiday weekend.
Girl…. you need to update your books! …. seriously…. you need to log both your expenses and your income into either your bookkeeping software or a simple Income and Expense spreadsheet. As bakers we tend to spend more on our expenses and bring in more income around the holidays so putting this task off will just compound your bookkeeping workload. So make a point to update your books after every major holiday and I promise your future self will be thanking you!
….And if you haven’t started keep track of your income and expenses I have a the perfect tool just for you. My friend Braden who is a Lawyer with a masters in accounting whos entire mission in life is to help creative business owners (talk about a good friend to have !) has put together a super simple income and expense sheet that your accountants will love when it comes to tax time. He also includes a short course called the Book keeping Blueprint all about how to set up your bookkeeping properly and you can snag it Here for only $30 bucks! Trust me it’ll be the best $30 you spend all year.
Ok now that you’ve gotten your books up to date I want you to take a minute and sit down and see what your actual profit was. Profit= income (what you made) - expenses ( all your supplies aka ingredients, packaging etc.). And I want you to honestly evaluate how well your holidays sales went. Its so easy to get caught up in the hustle of making sales and baking orders that you tend to forget to take a step back and see if your business is operating at a profit or if its operating at a loss. So take a look and see what your profit was and evaluate if that was a fair compensation for the amount of time you put in.
So for example: this past weekend I did both a pop-up and a cookie decorating class for Valentines day. I baked 80 cookies for the pop-up and the class was for 14 people. which grossed $782. My ingredients and packaging cost $120 so I made $662. I spent approximately 20 hours both in prep and attending the market and class so my rough hourly rate was $33/ hour before taxes which I feel is fair rate for my time. However if I had spent just $100 more on my packaging/ supplies ( like new cookie cutters) that would drop my hourly rate down to $22. And if we assume that good old uncle same takes 30% of our income then I'm really only bringing home $14.52/ hour.
So I want you to run through your numbers and see what you’re making and decide for yourself if that’s a fair rate for your time. If it was that’s great! If not I want you to take a minute and see what you can adjust before your next holiday/event. Should you raise your prices? Modify your packaging? Do you need to promote your sales more? Buy less “ unnecessary” items. Really the point of this is just to get your brain turning on what improvements you can make. The last thing you want is to go an entire year working your butt off only to realize you were working for free!
Ok so this last thing you want to do is a fun one! Do you have any extras leftover from a pop-up? If so I want you to go out and strategically gift them to people in your network who are your ideal future customers/ or people who will become raving fans. For example if your a cookie decorator gift your extras to your hairstylist or barista. They interact with your ideal customer base all day everyday and your thoughtful gesture is sure to be the talk of the shop that day. Or if you have cookie printer gift them yo a local business/ send them to work with your husband if he has a corporate job. You never know who might be looking for logo printed goodies in the future. So if you didn’t sell out I don’t want you to just toss your goods in the trash. Use them as a way to network in your local community. Use them to create a buzz about your business. Start building up your know like and trust factor with your community by spreading a little joy !
Ok there you have it… three things we all ( me included) should be doing every time we have a big holiday sale. If you found this helpful please share it with your baking besties! And as always….
Happy Baking !
Kaitlyn