In this episode of The Breadwinner Podcast, Caroline dives into the art of menu planning for the fourth quarter, a crucial time for sourdough microbakery owners. As the busiest season approaches, it can be tempting to say yes to every opportunity and flavor idea. But without a clear plan, you risk burnout.

Caroline shares her own hard-learned lessons from last year when she overcommitted in November and struggled to keep up by December. This time, she offers practical tips for planning a balanced, profitable holiday menu that aligns with both your values and customer desires, ensuring you don’t burn out before the season’s end.

Caroline emphasizes the importance of listening to your customers and focusing on a manageable menu. She suggests surveying customers to find out what they really want and planning your offerings around that feedback.

Additionally, she shares insights on batching and freezing dough in advance to streamline your production schedule. This episode is packed with actionable advice on menu preparation, time management, and creating a sustainable holiday season, making it a must-listen for sourdough bakers looking to maximize profits while keeping stress at bay.

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Episode 26

Welcome to the Breadwinner Podcast. This is the show for sourdough micro bakery owners who are building a sustainable, successful, profitable business from their home. If you are already in business or if you're dreaming of starting one, this is the place for you. I'm your host, Caroline Bower. I own a successful in home sourdough bakery, and I am here to share everything I've learned that works and that doesn't, plus everything that I'm researching along the way so we can build thriving businesses together.

Today is part two in a series of episodes about planning for the fourth quarter of the year. We started this series last week, talking about planning our schedule. And today's episode is going to be a fun one, and we get to talk about planning our menu. I think I'm not alone.

That planning the menu is one of the funnest parts of being a sourdough baker.

This is a really important part. Of setting yourself up for success. In the fourth quarter of the year, which is usually very busy. So the purpose of this episode series is to help you think ahead and set yourself up for a season that maximizes your opportunities, but also make sure that you're not burning yourself out.

So by the end of this episode, you should have a solid plan for structuring your quarter for menu prepping in advance.

So I talked about this, in the previous episode in more depth. But just to recap a little bit. Quarter four or Q4 is typically the busiest season of the year for most retail industries. And bakeries certainly fall in the same category.

This is a season that's filled with opportunities with people asking for special things or people wanting to buy products for holidays, for gatherings, for parties to give as gifts.

And so I really did not offer very much for Christmas time or for the month of December.

Again, I talked about this more in depth in the previous episode, but the goal of the season here is not to just make all the money, make all the breads, say yes to everything. But to create space so that you are able to balance what's most important. Holiday. Family commitments. Family traditions. Spend time focused, undivided undistracted time with your family.

So without a solid plan, you can end up over-committing wasting time. On products. Even creating too many products that don't sell. And certainly the risk of burnout is big here. So you don't want to enter December already feeling frazzled and overwhelmed. So the goal here is to plan far in advance. And make sure that you're ready for November and December.

So the very first step in planning your menu for the fourth quarter of the year is to understand what your customers are going to want from you this season.

So check in and find out are they looking for bread for their holiday table? Do they want sandwich bread to make sandwiches with leftover Turkey? Maybe they are really interested in something that they can give to their loved ones. Maybe they want ready to go treats for holiday parties.

What they're most excited to buy from you. And if they have any special requests, this is a super easy way to make sure that you're not wasting time on products that won't sell and that you're offering the highest number of products that people want. So that you have the highest chance of maximizing the opportunities season and saying yes to the right things.

If you want to learn more about that, go back to episode 14, where I talk about a planning week and I talked about how I sent a survey and you can even download a free copy of the survey that I used. And you can use that as a springboard. To send out. Uh, Survey to your own customers. What this allowed me to do is now as I'm moving forward, planning my holiday menu. I know things like my customers asked for more sweet treats unexpectedly, they really want more things like muffins, cinnamon rolls. Scones things like that. And they want more flavored sourdough loaves. So in this. The holiday season, I will be still offering staples. I always offer a classic sandwich [00:07:00] bread and a classic rustic sourdough loaf. But I'm also going to be adding in more flavored. Sourdough. But hards and special things like a rotating selection of muffins.

So when you have that clarity, it really helps, you know where to allocate your energy. And how to make sure that you're offering the right things, that your customers will actually buy.

So once you've narrowed down your menu using customer feedback. Focus on what you know, that you can deliver really well. So I had people ask for bagels. But bagels don't feel aligned for me. They are going to take me too much time and not be the right use for my energy. They might be a great yes for you.

So they're a good return on my investment. That's an example. Also, I find that muffins are really easy to offer. That's something that I can deliver. Well, It's consistent and people love them.

So the trick here is to not, over-complicate it focus on what you love to offer and what your customers are asking for.

Communicate about it very well on social media or your marketing channels.

Just hype it up, share tidbits into your process, share testimonials. Let people get excited about what you're offering and let them see that you are listening to them and offering what they're asking for.

So we'll talk a little bit more now about structuring your menu.

That's what feels manageable to me. And I know that if I start offering too much, I'm going to be overwhelmed and my customers will be overwhelmed by the amount of options I'm giving them.

There's a sweet spot where you're offering just the right amount without crippling them with decision fatigue when they look at your menu and there are so many options that they just can't decide.

So one way to make this work really well is to plan your entire month's menu ahead of time. And then you can share it with your customers.

So they can plan their holiday orders and you can plan out your ingredients, your schedule, your packaging, your promotion schedule, the way that you're going to communicate about it online.

And my customers love it because they can see the full month. The flavors that I'll be rotating. And it's allowed me to have some really consistent weeks in the past two months because they can plan ahead. They know what's coming, they know what to expect. So highly recommend planning out your menu. For the entire month or even for six weeks or two months. So that you can see the full, big picture and what's coming and how to anticipate it. Right now is just the beginning of October, but I am just about to sit down and start nailing down my November. Thanksgiving menu, even though that's over six weeks. Out. So that I can start planning head on what I can stock the freezer with what maybe packaging.

Another advantage of planning your menu in advance is that it makes it a lot easier for you to batch produce your items. So if you have something that you can make ahead of time and stick in the freezer. And maybe it's something that you're offering on a rotating basis. Then when you have time, maybe you make a double batch or a quadruple batch and you put half of it in the freezer for when you're offering it again in a couple of weeks.

So speaking of batch, preparing. One of my favorite strategies for planning ahead is to prepare and freeze as much as you can ahead of time. So some of the classic things that a lot of people prepare ahead, aren't cookie dough and scones. You can prepare both of these freeze, the dough and bake it straight from frozen and it comes out beautifully.

Anything that can be made in advance and frozen will save you so much time and stress during the crazy holiday weeks, when you have so much going on so many orders to fulfill. You don't have to worry about mixing it up in the moment because it's already frozen and ready for you to bake from frozen.

This is going to be a really valuable episode to help as plan our quarter four menu and get ahead of the curve. I know for sure. I'm going to be doing dinner rolls, mixing up the dough. In the last week of October sticking it in the freezer. So that it's ready for me, for my Thanksgiving orders.

And I don't have to worry about. Shaping hundreds of dinner rolls the week of Thanksgiving, like I did last year.

So they tested a couple of times. And then they offer it right away.

To help lessen this stress. I really recommend that you create a rhythm of recipe testing maybe early in the month, or even for me, a lot of times I'll recipe test on Mondays. And then if it's successful. If I liked the way it turns out I will offer it the following week on my menu, but I'm not trying to recipe test one day to offer something for sale the very next day. I just have found through experience that tends to be a lot more stressful and giving myself more buffer time. Let's me work out the kinks in a recipe.

This season, I have decided not to offer porch pickups the last week of October and that week, I am just going to be focused on recipe testing. Planning ahead, stocking up the freezer with things like dinner rolls muffins. And getting a jumpstart on November and December. So if you can plant a recipe testing day, ideally sometime in October, that'll let you perfect.

Your holiday menu. And test which items freeze well. So that you are going into the holiday season, knowing exactly what you're offering and how to prepare it in advance.

Next let's talk about timing.

So it's important to map out your production schedule for major holidays, like Thanksgiving and Christmas, and then also consider things like. Teacher gifts the week before Christmas, probably when kids are getting out of school.

Make sure that you have all of these planned out. Pretty far in advance so that you can communicate these deadlines well with your customers. That's going to help eliminate any sort of stress for you. And a scramble or a disappointment from your customers if they missed your deadline.

Another thing to think about for the season. Is that this is certainly a season of gifting. So people are going to be looking for things like hostess gifts, holiday gifts, teachers' gifts.

Something to bring to a party, something to bring to a white elephant all sorts of gift opportunities. Client gifts come up. In this season. So think about giftable items like maybe crackers. They should go in a gift basket or holiday themed loaves.

So I was able to feel good about raising the price enough to justify the time that it takes me to make them, because I'm also increasing the size.

The next thing to talk about briefly here is limited time offers. So around the holidays, this can be a fun time to offer a holiday gift bundle. Seasonal flavor flight, where you have a few mini loaves of fun, seasonal flavors. That can be a great gift option or something for a holiday party where people put out a grazing board or something like that.

Now, the last thing, I talked much more deeply about this the previous episode about planning your schedule. But, I cannot let an episode about planning go by without making sure to touch on.

The importance of setting clear boundaries. And.

Prioritizing your own self care.

So part of planning your menu is deciding ahead of time when you're accepting orders and when you'll close shop and rest and spend time with your family.

It's so easy to get caught up in the hustle of this season. And get excited about all of the opportunities, but make sure that you are. Taking breaks. Eating well, getting enough sleep. Because ultimately that is what you need to do to serve your customers best.

All right. Let's wrap up. So quarter four is a time of opportunity, but it can also be overwhelming if you're not going in with. A clear, solid plan. So by preparing your menu in advance and batching, where you can, freezing to stay ahead of the game, you are going to set yourself up for success.

Don't forget next week's episode is going to share ideas from over a dozen other sourdough bakers on what you can prep ahead of time and phrase for those busy weeks.

We can get really clear on your values. On what your best yeses are.

If you need a second opinion, if you just feel stuck doing it by yourself, you don't have to do it alone. If that sounds valuable, jump down into the show notes to book a one-on-one call with me. I absolutely love sitting down with other sourdough bakers and helping them grow to the next level in their business.

All right. Last thing.

I will be back soon with a new episode and until then, happy baking.