Engage your customers through social media. This will encourage them to pay more for your high quality product. Promotion and Marketing Your biggest competitor is probably the local grocery store in-house bakery. It's much easier for customers to pick up fresh bread, a birthday cake or cookies while doing their weekly shopping. The other draw is that the prices are usually lower. However, the products are not usually the quality and rarely, if ever, do instore bakeries offer tortes. You have to encourage people to make that extra trip to your location and pay more for your high quality product. One way to do that is by engaging customers through social media. Tortes done right will be very photogenic. This makes them perfect candidates for online marketing and promotion through the usual Facebook, Twitter and Instagram channels. A professional looking website is a must. A Facebook page provides a format for you to share photographs of your mouth watering baked goods and share your latest creative torte offerings. Sharing these pages through mobile attracts even more customers because many people are searching for a bakery while out running errands, or stopping on the way to work to pick up something fresh and want to go beyond the usual muffins or donuts. Always mention if your recipes were handed down through four generations, or have some other interesting story behind them. Mention any unusual or secret ingredients. That's what will bring people in to your bakeshop. When starting out with a torte offering, or NATHAN HILDEBRANDT Midwest SHAWNA GOLDFARB Northeast 50 < SEP 2015 | bakemag.com JEFF YANKELLOW West MIKE MCLAIN South 877-KAFLOUR or 877-523-5687 kingarthurflour.com/professional any new product for that matter, always have small sample portions ready to serve at nohttp://www.kingarthurflour.com/professional