bake - January 2013 - 12

management
Handing Off the Keys
As a business owner, it may not always be easy to distance
yourself from the everyday projects, tasks, and busy work,
especially if they were once a major part of your daily routine.
Even so, any leader assumes the responsibility to be a reliable
long-term planner and strategist.
Train your key players
If you can’t guarantee that your business will remain in your
family after you retire or leave, it is critical to document the
specifi c operations of your business. Most importantly, your
head management should be trained to perform their responsibilities
independently, as well as inherit many of your tasks in
the instance of your absence.
“Your job is to train people to do parts of your job, so you eventually
work your way out of a job,” says Lynn Schurman, owner
of Cold Spring Bakery in Cold Spring, MN.
Ideally, as an owner or head manager, you need to prepare your
business for someone else to either purchase or inherit, so that
they can maintain and improve its profi tability.
“We are currently training managing partners in the case that
we open a second location. We have them taking business
courses, classes, and attending seminars by RBA,” says Beth
Fahey, owner of Creative Cakes in Chicago, IL.
Fahey says they are training managing partners to adopt
major responsibilities as the business grows and to ensure the
continued long-term success of the bakery in the case that the
bakery does not continue with family members.
Build your manual
Schurman says some of the most important details you need
to track about your company are your typical customers, your
market area, your niche categories and your documented
fi nancial reports.
Well-tracked fi nancial records play a key role in seamlessly
selling your business or handing it down to another member of
your family. With this information, success and failure can very
accurately be defi ned from an untrained eye.
In addition, there is value in creating an offi cial outline of the
bakery’s departments and the responsibilities associated with
12 < JAN 2013 | bakemag.com
each role in the
department. This
document can
help illustrate
the distribution
of accountability
within the business
and improve the communication between departments.
In addition, the consistency of your bakery’s product is possibly
the most important element. File away detailed descriptions,
recipes and formulas of every regular item or specialty, so
that it may be referenced by new hired staff or owners. In
fact, Fahey plans to create video documentation of all of her
bakery’s recipes to ensure the integrity of the original products.
Step away from the action
If you want to pursue any of these tasks, you need to be able
to step away from your business and carefully evaluate how
it operates and why it functions in that manner. While it may
occasionally be necessary, it is ideal to avoid wasting your time
in the decorating room or behind the register.
“I have to be able to turn over the day-to-day stuff . I need
to be able to leave that to my managers so I can focus on
how to increase the profi tability of the company long range,”
Schurman says. “If I’m busy with orders or production schedules,
I can’t be focused on creating a business plan.”
It might be diffi cult to determine the appropriate time to
distance yourself from the day-to-day tasks at your bakery and
focus on the bigger picture, but as a company grows, the roles
of its owner, as well as its employees, should adapt.
“You know you need to step away and look at your business, yet
you can’t aff ord someone to replace you decorating or whatever
got you in the business in the fi rst place,” Fahey says. “As
soon as we made the conscious decision to step away from the
decorating table, our business became much more profi table.”
Being able to free your schedule to assess concerns such as
the fi nances of your company, the managerial structure, or key
demographics is critical to eventually being able to illustrate
the DNA of your business to a potential buyer.
TIMMY TRABON
http://www.bakemag.com
bake - January 2013

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