The Bread Winner Podcast

Thanksgiving is so late this year that between Small Business Saturday and Christmas, you have exactly 27 days to sell. There is no time inside that window to go find new customers, which means the bakers who fill those 27 days with orders are the ones whose neighbors already know they exist before the end of October.This week I am walking you through a 10-minute check-in on your third-quarter numbers, then a three-week plan to build local visibility before your holiday pre-orders open. You will leave with three numbers to track and a simple, repeatable way to get seen by the people already looking for a local baker this season.🎯 The Seen and Sold Sprint starts October 10th. Enrollment closes October 9th: https://carolinebower.myflodesk.com/sprintwaitlist 🎙️ Send me a voicemail on SpeakPipe: https://www.speakpipe.com/breadwinnerpodcast 🍞 The Bread Winner Inner Circle opens twice a year. Get on the waitlist: https://www.carolinebower.com/innercircle 📋 Download the FREE checklist, Your First Steps to a Successful In-Home Bakery: https://www.carolinebower.com/checklist 🧮 Grab the Profit & Pricing Calculator: https://www.carolinebower.com/calculator ✉️ Join my email list: https://carolinebower.myflodesk.com/newsletter 🛒 Shop my sourdough microbakery favorites: https://www.carolinebower.com/links 📱 Follow me on Instagram: @carolinebower_sourdough

In my very first holiday season, I said yes to opening day at a pumpkin patch because I was sure it would be packed. I sat there for nine hours in the September heat with my kids and sold four loaves of bread. That day taught me more about choosing events than any market I have ever done, and today I am handing you the exact framework I built from it.I am sorting every selling opportunity into three categories, recurring markets, one-off events, and pop-ups, and walking through the four questions that decide whether any of them is worth your Saturday. I also answer a listener voicemail about recovering from a bad bake day.🎯 The Seen and Sold Sprint opens for enrollment in early October. Get on the waitlist: https://carolinebower.myflodesk.com/sprintwaitlist🎙️ Send me a voicemail on SpeakPipe: https://www.speakpipe.com/breadwinnerpodcast🍞 The Bread Winner Inner Circle opens twice a year. Get on the waitlist: https://www.carolinebower.com/innercircle📋 Download the FREE checklist, Your First Steps to a Successful In-Home Bakery: https://www.carolinebower.com/checklist🧮 Grab the Profit & Pricing Calculator: https://www.carolinebower.com/calculator✉️ Join my email list: https://carolinebower.myflodesk.com/newsletter🛒 Shop my sourdough microbakery favorites: https://www.carolinebower.com/links📱 Follow me on Instagram: @carolinebower_sourdough

Online revenue follows an audience. It does not go out and build you one. That is the part the internet conveniently leaves out.This week I am answering a voicemail question from Lindsay of Lindsay Bakes Bread about building additional income streams in a microbakery. I break it into three categories based on how much each one depends on you actually baking and being physically present, walk through real numbers on workshops versus online products, and give you a simple framework for figuring out which stream actually fits your goals, your capacity, and what your family needs right now.🎯 The Seen and Sold Sprint is back in October. Enrollment is open now: https://sprint.carolinebower.com🎙️ Send me a voicemail on SpeakPipe: https://www.speakpipe.com/breadwinnerpodcast🍞 The Bread Winner Inner Circle opens twice a year. Get on the waitlist: https://www.carolinebower.com/innercircle📋 Download the FREE checklist, Your First Steps to a Successful In-Home Bakery: https://www.carolinebower.com/checklist🧮 Grab the Profit & Pricing Calculator: https://www.carolinebower.com/calculator✉️ Join my email list: https://carolinebower.myflodesk.com/newsletter🛒 Shop my sourdough microbakery favorites: https://www.carolinebower.com/links📱 Follow me on Instagram: @carolinebower_sourdough

I am still the one doing every single 4 a.m. morning. I am still the primary production baker in my own bakery. And somewhere in the last six months I realized I am not meant to be that person forever.This week is a real, unscripted six-month review, March through August, using the same four questions I ask every single month: what's working, what's not, what I learned, and how I'm moving forward. I get into the messy middle of building a team, why I closed the bakery for three weeks in July and how a workshop paid for it, the real numbers behind walking away from my longtime farmers market, and the identity question I've been sitting with lately about whether I'm a baker or a business owner who bakes.🎯 The Seen and Sold Sprint is back in October. Enrollment is open now: https://sprint.carolinebower.com🎙️ Send me a voicemail on SpeakPipe: https://www.speakpipe.com/breadwinnerpodcast🍞 The Bread Winner Inner Circle opens twice a year. Get on the waitlist: https://www.carolinebower.com/innercircle📋 Download the FREE checklist, Your First Steps to a Successful In-Home Bakery: https://www.carolinebower.com/checklist🧮 Grab the Profit & Pricing Calculator: https://www.carolinebower.com/calculator✉️ Join my email list: https://carolinebower.myflodesk.com/newsletter🛒 Shop my sourdough microbakery favorites: https://www.carolinebower.com/links📱 Follow me on Instagram: @carolinebower_sourdough

If you asked me whether ingredient costs have gone up across the board the last few years, I would have said yes without a second thought, and I would have had zero actual evidence for it. So I went and pulled the real numbers, and butter genuinely surprised me.This week is a different kind of episode. Instead of a how-to, I am walking you through three things I found when I actually researched what is happening in the bread world right now: whether sourdough demand is really holding up, how your customer's eating habits have shifted without much fanfare, and what ingredient prices have actually done over the past year versus what we all assume they have done. Plus, a baker's question about blending whole grain flour into a familiar dough, and my new favorite inexpensive kitchen tool.🔪 The immersion blender I'm loving right now: https://rivr.link/0bw-Qb_ISG🎙️ Send me a voicemail on SpeakPipe: https://www.speakpipe.com/breadwinnerpodcast 🍞 The Bread Winner Inner Circle opens twice a year. Get on the waitlist: https://www.carolinebower.com/innercircle 📋 Download the FREE checklist, Your First Steps to a Successful In-Home Bakery: https://www.carolinebower.com/checklist 🧮 Grab the Profit & Pricing Calculator: https://www.carolinebower.com/calculator ✉️ Join my email list: https://carolinebower.myflodesk.com/newsletter 🛒 Shop my sourdough microbakery favorites: https://www.carolinebower.com/links 📱 Follow me on Instagram: @carolinebower_sourdough