Research Your Target Market
Knowing and understanding what your customer want is critical to any pie shop success.
Failure does not mean you are a looser.
Failure is just a learning experience.
You become a looser only if you give up.
Examine it. What went wrong? Can it be fixed?
If you can not figure it out, seek help.
Ask others who are running a bakery.
Go to those who would not be your competitor.
The most important thing to do when opening a pop-up pie shop is to research a location that your target audience desires.
How will they access you by car, foot? Are they willing to come to you? When will they come to you, morning, afternoon or evening?What will the peak time be?
Finding a location where customers are looking for your pies will make you much more successful.
Focus On Your Customers
Your customers are your key to success. Happy customers become repeat customers, so work to make each customer experience memorable, Batiste says.
Ask your customers for feedback, talk with them at the counter, and ask for product suggestion once in awhile. Green agrees. Make the customer experience count, she says. Thats the best way to get repeat customers and money in the register.
What’s Your Backstory And How Did You Come Up With The Idea
Before Cape Whoopies was conceived, I was enjoying being the mom of two kids in high school, the wife to an airline pilot, and an aerobics teacher at my local gym.
When my kids had gone off to college and my husband was in the air, I had much time on my hands. There was only so much time you could spend at the gym, so with the newfound extra time I splurged in one of the things I always loved doing: making delicious baked things for friends.
My husband and I spend time a local restaurant as a hangout when he was home, so we would go to DiMillos and take our server friends whoopie pies. Why whoopie pies? I had tasted the Maine creation and thought, “good idea, not great execution”.
As I had traveled much with my husband, tasting the most delicious foods all over the world, like Belgium street food with the most indulgent chocolate, I realized one of the recurrent themes was more flavor can be tasted with less sugar.
So I made these whoopie pies my own with different flavor combinations and would bring them to our favorite restaurant employees. Thus entertaining my guests and friends with delightful homemade treats became a real joy for both parties!
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Download Your Pie Shop Business Logo
Now that your logo is customized, you will go to our final step, downloading your logo. We make it hassle-free with no email requirements and no sign-ups of any kind simply download and youre done.
Our logo generator will provide you with a high-resolution logo in a scalable vector graphic file format. This file format is the best for logos because it is easily editable and can be resized as small or as large as you need without losing any quality.
Our pie shop business logo designs also come available for all social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Google, and more.
Video: Find Out The Rules
Transcript – show/hide
Narrator: “Everyone has the right to know that the food theyre buying wont make them sick and that it is what it says it is. You might think that everyone knows how to make safe food that its just general knowledge. Enough food businesses have made mistakes in the past that the government has needed to create rules to keep us all safe.
“Even though there are rules to follow, theyre not one size fits all. The rules you need to follow depend on the food youre making or selling. There are tons of way for food to become unsafe. Harmful bugs can grow in some foods if theyre kept at the wrong temperature and things like chemicals, metal and stones can get into your food. Its your job to manage the food safety and suitability risks that apply to you so you know youre keeping your customers safe and happy.
“Luckily not all risks apply to all businesses. For example, lets follow the life of the humble kiwi pie. A baker making between 1 and 100 batches of pies every week needs to think about all of the things that could make people sick. Theyll need to check their ingredients are delivered and stored safely, but the bakers and other kitchen staff wash their hands and wear clean clothes that the kitchen is clean and tidy and that the pie fillings are cooked and cooled safely. Theyll also make sure that pies containing allergens are kept separate from pies that dont contain allergens and that all pies are packaged and labelled correctly.
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Bulk Pie Crust Makes 20 Crusts
Lets get started with the ingredients!
- 1- 5lb bag of all purpose flour
- 1- 3lb can vegetable shortening
- 4 Tablespoons sugar
- 4 eggs
- 2 cups water
Youll want to get out the biggest bowl you have . Mix the flour, sugar, and salt together. Using a pastry cutter if you have one , blend the shortening with the flour mixture.
When the flour mixture and shortening are combined, set the bowl aside.
In a separate bowl , beat together the water, eggs and vinegar using a fork or whisk.
Add the liquid mixture to the flour mixture and blend with a fork until all ingredients are moistened.
Continue to blend using hands and fold dough into a ball.
Cover dough ball with plastic and refrigerate for at least 15 minutes.
Use the reserved 2 cups of flour to flour your surface and hands, though you probably wont need it all. Divide your giant dough ball in quarters. Divide each quarter into 5 equal parts. Youll have 20 equal-ish pieces of dough. Roll each dough portion into a ball. Its okay if theyre not perfectly even. You can use the smaller balls for top crusts and the larger ones for the bottom crusts. For a flakier crust, be careful not to overwork the dough.
Wrap each ball individually in plastic wrap, then place balls into a freezer bag. Store in the freezer indefinitely. Ive stored mine for over a year without any problems.
Each dough ball makes one pie crust or top.
Selling Pies From Home
Many successful pie shops were started by selling pies from home. After perfecting your recipes, securing your inventory, and building a client base, it is possible to continue selling food from home and make a delicious profit. When you start learning how to sell baked goods from home, you will discover many tools and apps that can help with how to sell baked goods to coffee shops and how to sell to farmers’ markets.
Choose a food business software specifically designed for helping cooks manage the business side of selling baked goods and other prepared foods from home. These apps help you manage your entire operation with confidence. Some include a POS or point-of-sell tool that will allow you to directly accept deposits and payments within the app.
It is also a great idea to establish a website that is geo-tagged to your local community . Your website can be your best salesperson, so take the time to make it visually appealing and easy to navigate. When you choose to sell pies B2B, , they want to see an entrepreneur who is a fantastic pie maker and one who is also a serious business person.
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Advice For Other Entrepreneurs Who Want To Get Started Or Are Just Starting Out
If you want to get started in your own business, you need to truly love what you are doing. Have a passion that is so deep that even on the days when its 2:00 am and you are still working, you are loving what you are creating.
You need to understand that the amount of push and hustle that you will need to have to make this happen is far greater than you can even imagine, today. Understand that its going to be hard in the beginning and be willing to say no to certain things so you can continue to say yes to keeping your business going.
I have been creating my business for six years and I love it more, today, than I did even in the beginning.
For me, I feel like Cape Whoopies is my alter ego, my child, my creation. Its all the goodness I have, expressed for others to enjoy. Sometimes people dont appreciate what you are doing…its okay, just think of a duck and how the water runs off his back and thats how you let the negative comments go, so you can continue creating your perfectly divine business!
If youre just starting out, keep tuned in to that still small voice thats inside you thats quietly roaring about your passion. Forge on! Success requires walking on water while keeping your eyes on the ultimate goal.
You will fail and doubt, but keep on. You have to believe in yourself even when others do not. My Cape Whoopies dream, , is fueled by keeping my eyes fixed on Jesus, my passion, and lots of hustle and push.
Dont Forget About Marketing
Your initial marketing strategies will hopefully result in a steady stream of repeat customers, but that doesnt mean you should let up on your marketing efforts.
Try new marketing tactics. Buy ads on social media, participate in charity events, and hand out business cards as often as possible. You should always be looking for new ways to get your name out there, Green says.
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Describe The Process Of Launching The Online Store/business
My start up costs were in the neighborhood of $20,000 which my friends gave me because they wanted me to be making the whoopie pies they loved. They wanted to buy them for their friends and that was reason enough for them to help me get Cape Whoopies started.
Thus began the journey of moving the business from friends to Internet community. The process of launching the business online was relatively simple. I found a software called Shopify and hired a company, Inspire Studios to help me do the initial design of the site which took maybe two days.
Through this process, I wrote all the content and plugged it in. I photographed my beautiful pies and plugged the pictures into the site, as well. The entire process from start to finish was six days.
Periodically I stumble across a problem that I cant solve but Shopify is so great that it has Help you can contact to guide you through tough spots. With Shopify you can go to the site and click a link with a chat option and these help gurus will talk to you on the spot. They will explain what to do if its a problem they can solve. If not, they have a page of different sites to which they can outsource your case. All in all, Shopify and its Help are great.
The week of the Grand Opening in June, we sent out a press release to all the newspapers from weekly local, to the Currier, to the Portland Press Herald and the Boston Globe. We also sent the release to TV stations such as WGME, WBI, for example.
Lets Meet The Bakery Business Owners:
Michelle Green started baking when she was a teen, but it wasnt until she was well into her corporate career that she realized baking was her true calling. Fed up with the stale muffins that seemed to be standard fare at all of her board meetings, this baker and mother of triplets decided to ditch the business suit and open her own shop in Australia called Three Sweeties.
Barbara Batiste was also baking treats at an early age for her close-knit Filipino family, and after years of amazing her relatives with her creations, she decided to turn her love of all things tasty into a business. She started in her home, and her business continued to expand. She has outgrown three commercial kitchens since, in part due to her creative business modeling, which includes both a catering service and a mobile dessert food truck. Now, shes preparing to open a storefront in West Los Angeles called B Sweet Dessert Bar.
Victoria Roe started baking over a decade ago when she was asked to make a carrot cake for her mother in laws birthday. She runs her business from home, a cottage industry, in a small village in Ohio. Most of her customers find her through word of mouth or learn about her business when they taste one her creations at a local coffee shop. She focuses on gluten-free and veganbut youd never know it to taste them. Running Three Leee Cupcakery from home gives Victoria the flexibility be present to her young family and pursue a degree in business while bringing in income.
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What Have Been The Most Influential Books Podcasts Or Other Resources
I have loved the E-Myth series. They also allow you to sign up with them and they send you free booklets about important topics as you scale up. Things like company structure, how to create a meaningful work environment, how to source the best people for the job…they really help set up, scale up and grow your business, and much of it is free.
What Justifies Online Jewellery Sales And Purchases
Ive already mentioned how daily jewellery purchases amount to enormous sums. I also looked into how the business making the sales is ultimately responsible for profit margins.
What other benefits do internet jewellery sales offer, though?
- Small and simple to ship is jewellery. Additionally, there is a slight possibility that anything will break in transit.
- Given how different jewellery is, your internet business can offer various possibilities. For instance, a huge variety of necklace, anklet, and ring styles are available, as well as gold, diamonds, and shells. You can either establish a large store with everything or concentrate on one of these areas.
- One possibility is customization. Vendors can increase their earnings by taking orders from customers and producing bespoke jewellery.
- There are lots of sources you can choose from.
Finally, online jewellery sales and purchases are popular. People exchange their old antiques in this booming bazaar in the hopes of finding their next prized diamond.
In the same way that motorcycling is a hobby, the jewellery industry is driven by the love of the craft.
A few options exist for selling jewellery online. So, for your benefit, well list a couple of them below:
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