13 Tips to Grow Your Bakery

As a bakery owner, you pour your heart and soul into creating beautiful works of delicious art that enhance weddings, birthdays, and other special occasions in people’s lives. It’s a time-consuming craft that may not leave much time to consider ways to expand your business.

March 7, 2019 | Baker

By: Paige N.

Paige N. came to Acuity in 2015 as a commercial lines underwriter. Through her time in underwriting, she worked on a wide array of accounts, many in the service industry, including: automobile repair shops, apartments, beauty shops, and everything in between. In addition to her underwriting experience, Paige worked in advertising and is studying to obtain the Associate in General Insurance (AINS) designation. Thanks to her father, Paige drives a manual transmission and finds driving a manual much more fun than an automatic!

Author of Services & Retail Focus

Luckily, there are several ways to grow your bakery business without spending too much time or money. Here are a few ideas:

Learn about your competitors. The bakery business is a local one, so discover who is in your market and what they are doing. What products are they selling? What are their pricing strategies? Who are they targeting? Are they partnered with any other local businesses?
Define your unique selling proposition. After you have researched your market, define what makes your business unique. Once you have determined your unique selling proposition, promote it!
Network with local businesses in your industry. Befriend local restaurants and caterers to see if they would be interested in including your products in their menus. If you bake wedding cakes, reach out to local florists, reception venues, photographers, and wedding planners to form partnerships and generate referrals.
Create an appealing website. Be sure to include a portfolio, product offerings, pricing, and contact information. Include your contact information in several locations on the site, so people can easily find it.
Create and regularly maintain social media pages, especially Facebook and Instagram. Be sure to link your website to your social pages.
Plan your Instagram posts. Taking the time to plan photos and captions in advance will lead to more targeted and on-brand posts than rushed ones without much consideration for audience or brand.
Post pictures of your work on your social pages. Always post high-quality photos that are not blurry and have good lighting with a simple background that doesn't distract from your work. Include a watermark on your photos so anyone who sees them knows they are yours.
On Facebook, tag customers in photos of work you do for them. This will allow their friends to see your work and help you expand your audience.
Ask for reviews. Build a library of reviews that potential customers can see on your website, social media pages, or other online platforms. Start building your review repertoire by asking current or former customers for reviews of work you have done for them. Moving forward, inform customers at the time of purchase how they can leave a review.
Upsell. Even the smallest extra sales, such as a cupcake stand or cake topper, can really add up. Read your customers to determine if there are opportunities to upsell. You can also include an options section on your quotes to include the cost of relevant upsells.
Offer samples. Let customers coming through your shop try your work. Set out samples of items that are available for purchase that day. If people try it, there's a better chance they will buy it.
Distribute business cards. When choosing business cards, pick a design that mirrors the look and feel of your store, website, and social media pages to keep a consistent brand. Set them out in your store and give some to your business partners to display in their stores or hand out if people ask for bakery recommendations. Also, give away a few cards to customers with their orders so they can keep one on file and give away the others.
Protect your investment. One emergency could erase all the gains your business has made. One of the best ways to protect your business investments is through insurance with specialized coverages for your bakery business, such as spoilage and food contamination. Both coverages and many more are available through Acuity.