bake - January 2012 - 24

Online strategies Some retailers are hitting the jackpot by selling products online through their websites. Most recommend keeping your retail and online businesses distinctly apart. Manage them separately. Track sales of retail and online independently to ensure you know where the proﬁts and costs are coming. Don’t make the mistake of simply assuming that your
With increased sales, reduced rent, and an available labor pool, it only makes sense to expand and do more.

total annual sales are up – so you must be doing something right. Cheri Kovacic, owner of Cheri’s Bakery in Wichita, KS, and Cheri’s Cookies (www.cheriscookies.com), recommends running online and retail as two separate businesses. She founded Cheri’s Bakery as a cake and sweet goods shop 10 years ago and later started Cheri’s Cookies, which has developed into a well-known supplier of made-

Creating an elegant atmosphere is critical to success when you open a retail store in an affluent part of town.

overexposed and loses its luster – and proﬁts, as a result. But ask yourself this tough question: Have you even scratched the surface of unleashing the power of your brand. A lot of baker-

ies have no idea how cherished their brand is – or has the potential to be – by locals. Remember that there is a rapidly growing culture of foodies who love local foods and enjoy blogging about their favorites to others through social media channels. Local food is arguably the No. 1 trend in the retail food industry. And this trend will only accelerate in the near future, as more people seek to connect to the food community through online channels. One Dallas bakery owner shares the story of how a recent Groupon promotion led to dozens of new satisﬁed customers coming into her shop to buy cakes. Newcomers told her they didn’t even know her bakery was in town, and she’d been in business for nearly 30 years. Helping spread the word, sites like Groupon and Wimgo offer special deals of the day to local customers in cities across the nation.

from-scratch, hand-cut and uniquely decorated cookies with an artistic ﬂair. Still, growing her online business wasn’t easy. “I thought shipping would be the easiest part, but it turned out to be the opposite,” she points out. Fitting decorated cookies into a box for shipping thousands of miles posed a challenge. “It’s like a puzzle. The cookies all have to nest together on that perfect quarter-sheet board.” To ensure everyone in the cookie department knows how to do it, Kovacic mapped out schematics for each type of cookie box and labeled them (Deck the Halls, Dear Santa, etc.). Each schematic shows the types of cookie shapes that go into each box and how they ﬁt. “A lot of planning goes into what will ﬁt.” Melody Richey, who founded elé Cake Co. in West

Other expansion ideas including reaching new markets with the same products you produce now or taking over part or all of the space next to you. Find out if any tenants are leaving your shopping center and negotiate a lease for the new space. Further, you can license your products or services to others and receive a royalty payment for each product sold. If you are not doing full-scale catering, consider joining forces with an established wedding caterer and selling your branded wedding cakes. You don’t have to actually put a label on your cakes to make it a brand.

Carrollton, OH, with fellow cake decorator Becky Nels Lewis, emphasizes that one great reason to run retail and online separately is to maximize the potential of your brands. Their online business (www.yummes.com) is marketed under a different brand called Yummés. Online products feature a gourmet line of 3-inch cookies, dessert cakes, fondant celebration cakes, and 3-inch “Roundies.” A box of 12 Roundies sells for $48. “We wanted Yummés to be a step above what we are at elé,” Richey says. “Our online products are more expensive. The presentation of Yummés is very upscale.”

24 < JAN 2012 | bakemag.com

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bake - January 2012

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