Mixing It Up
B akery sales present pro t potential in virtually any co ee shop. Consumers expect to nd these items on the menu when they arrive and o en buy on impulse waiting for that espresso to arrive. When preparing items for your bakery case, baked good mixes can be a great solution to providing pro table, top-quality, fresh baked goods directly to your customers. COST, QUALITY & CONSISTENCY ere are three great reasons for baking your own baked goods in your shop cost, quality and consistency. ese are all factors that shop owners look for in every product they o er. Without these three things, they wouldn't make any money, people wouldn't like the products being o ered and they certainly wouldn't come back for more with inconsistent, bad-tasting products on the menu. Debbie Anderson, founder and managing member of Victorian House Scones , says she began baking while attending graduate school when money was tight. A er several years in her chosen career, she opted to take a break from night-time teaching to bake scones for a local co ee shop. She continued for four to ve years. Occasionally when she traveled, Anderson would drop o frozen, unbaked dough at the shop. e owner would then thaw and bake these items, although the avor and quality where never quite as good as fresh. Her moment of inspiration arrived when she realized that they needed to be baked from frozen and not thawed. Even then providing frozen dough was not quite the same as o ering fresh baked goods. So she turned to mixes. I didn't want to bake anymore but I also didn't want to give up the recipes, she says. For retailers, one of the bene ts of using a mix is consistency; you aren't getting sidetracked and you can't forget any ingredients or realize that you are out of an ingredient at the last minute. You are guaranteed it is consistent. at is one big plus. Fresher products and quality are the bene ts of baking your own products in-store, says Jim Collins, owner of New England Cupboard . Products don't get any fresher than when you bake them yourself. You know they are top-quality because you know exactly what went into them. ere are no worries about the facilities in which prebaked items are being made and handled. Baking mixes provide a simple and straightforward solution to quality control. ese are coming right out of your oven, so you know exactly what went in and what you are putting out in front of your customers isn't a prebaked product, says Anderson. You are just buying the one mix and everything is there for the most part, Collins says. You only have to add a couple of ingredients to it, like milk or water and eggs. is aspect also makes it very economical, he says, because you don't have to buy ve pounds of our, sugar, salt, and other ingredients; it's all already in the mix. Mixes only use small amounts of storage space on the shelf, says Patricia Mott, founder of , unlike all of Ella Scones the other ingredients mentioned above that you would need to stock in order to make the dough from scratch. GOOD MARGINS A busy 1,200 sq. . shop can bring in $500 per day in baked good sales, according to experienced shop owners. Baked goods typically contribute 25 percent to a $750,000 shop's annual gross and when baked in-store can make a pro t contribution of $65,000, according to Ed Arvidson, president of , in Bend Ore. An initial investment in E&C Consulting Inc. a convection oven, small refrigerator, baking pans and utensils runs $12,500, he says. We pay $0.62 for mu n batter for one mu n (plus $0.05-$0.10 for toppings) and resell for $1.41, says JP's Co ee founder Jack Groot, whose shop has been baking in-store since it opened. A baker comes in twice a week and bakes all of the items that go in our display case, says Groot, whose selection includes scones, mu ns, Texas-sized mu ns, cinnamon twists, cinnamon rolls, sticky buns and bagels. In terms of cost, you are looking at 40 to 42-cents or less per scone, says Anderson. So you can see that the pro t margin can be really high for baked goods made in the store. Mott says that cost control is one BY PATRICIA MCCARTNEY Providing fresh treats is easy with profit-pleasing mixes 18 January 2010 Â www.specialty-coffee.com