08/25/2026
I’ve made plenty of mistakes while growing my home bakery—and honestly, that’s how I’ve learned some of my best lessons.
These are 8 things I wish I had known when I was first starting out. Not because there’s one “right” way to run a home bakery, but because avoiding a few of these could save you some time, money, stress… and probably a few late-night baking sessions. 😂
Here are 8 mistakes I’d avoid if I were starting over today. 🤍
Content credit kaylee snyder
When I first started, I was doing porch pickups and wanted to offer ALL the things. Five sourdough flavors? Why not?!
Well… because if I got one order of each flavor, suddenly I was making five separate bowls of dough instead of being able to bulk batch one or two flavors.
More options don’t always mean more sales. Sometimes they just mean more ingredients, more dishes, more prep and a lot more work.
Start with a few really solid items. Figure out what people actually want, get really good at making them efficiently, and grow your menu from there.
Your menu doesn’t have to be huge to be good. 🤍
This one took me a minute. 😂
There have been products I was SO excited about. I loved them, thought they tasted amazing and was convinced they were going to sell out.
And then… they totally flopped.
Meanwhile, something I almost didn’t put on the menu becomes the thing people ask me to bring back.
Listen to your customers. Ask your community what they want. Pay attention to what actually sells—not just what you personally love.
You can absolutely be creative, but at the end of the day, your customers will tell you what deserves a spot on your menu.
Please don’t just look at the bakery down the street and say, “Well, they’re charging $10, so I’ll charge $9.” 😅
Sit down and actually figure out what it costs YOU to make your product.
Flour. Butter. Sugar. Packaging. Labels. Your time. And all those little things that don’t seem expensive until you realize how quickly they add up.
Then decide what you need to make for that product to actually be worth producing.
Knowing your numbers might not be the fun part of owning a bakery, bu
