tablespoon.bakery

I LOVE the bakery..  sure, we do not offer a large selection of pastries or many other different things, but, we sell what we do have and the customers come back many times to enjoy them. On Saturday we went to a party. A couple who we met as coming in to the bakery as customers that I consider friends now, invites us over. So, I made 30 mini croissants to take with me as a gift for them and the other guests. As one was being bitten into, I noticed the inside, and it is that perfection I am working towards in my croissants.. (note, the croissant is a bit smashed only because of a bite, but then spend a moment with that beautifully constructed inside. Really, I could not be happier with the results. To me, this is beautiful, 100%. If you are interested, here is my recipe for the croissants, minus the instructions (look for croissant lamination for those details - google will be your friend): Strong bread flour 758g Water 379g Butter 100g Sugar 85g Fresh Yeast 20g (temperature dependent)...

Let me take a moment and look into my crystal ball. I wanna know what is coming around the corner.... ...5 minutes later Ok, that did not work...   On any given day I have many thoughts that race through my mind about what will happen this week, and the weeks and months to follow. Some days I want to pack up shop and just stop this nonsense. Other days I love the bakery so much and believe in the future that I think it is nonsense to even think it is nonsense .. did you keep up with that one? hehe My hopes are that we do not struggle more with money, and we find resolutions to the problems with the landlord. I would love to be able to hire one or two people to help in the baking, and customer service. I love the tables on the plaza and I really want them to be a success for us. What I am generating for myself is a business that is so successful that I can close for a month, and maybe go to India, or even just relax and think about other things in my life that I love to do or want to do...

The dreaded topic of money. I have said this before but I will go in to some detail this time so you have a clearer picture. In short, the bakery does not make money. We operate in the red. I have projections for us making more money and growing the business, but I did not take in to account the tourist season impacting us. As I have spoken about, much of our business comes from tourists, or people from other parts of the island, looking for vegan treats.  We have some amazing customers, whom I now consider friends, that come and we are really endlessly thankful for. In some respects, they are pieces of the glue that hold us together. With that said, we do not have income. Neither of us take home any pay. It just is not possible.  There are many bills (taxes, rent, electric, supplies, etc.) that cost a fortune. The money goes out the windows very fast let me tell you. What is important for me is that we build relationships with out customers. Almost to the point where taking money from...

I thought about this entry many times.. many many times... and even as I write it, I think to myself, Dave, it is better to just focus on what you have and forget about the troubles. But, that only serves me. It does not help anyone who may want to start their own business, and help them see things that could potentially happen. As you may recall.. things did not get off to a good start with the owner of my space. Before I opened, one day I went in to the bakery to do some work and found a leg of a lamb he decided to hand in my refrigerator. Without even telling me he was entering the building.  He did this again two weeks later with the freezer in the basement mind you. Over time, we have had some problems with the building and some he addressed, but many he did not.  The two biggest being the water in the basement, and the repairs from the three times we were broken in to. I sat down with him many times, trying to have an adult conversation. Trying to make lemonade, and he either get...

I have to laugh.. I swear I thought that owning my business would give me all the control, direction, and results that I wanted. I guess it is true, it does. But I never thought that I would be more stressed out than when I was working for the man (that is an American expression which I can explain if necessary). Stress comes from any of the following (but not limited to) areas: - bills - meeting customer needs - proper rest & finding time to enjoy life - doing taxes, including the aggregation of every receipt - worrying if I will have enough money for rent in a month from now - making mistakes with what is baked and feeling terrible about the results - arguing with my partner when really it is just two people who work very hard and are tired - not understanding why people do not come back - the language barrier - uff.. i can talk about this one for weeks - pricing products so they will sell and yet, not undercut myself - taking orders and they are not picked up by customers - the ...

I am pretty sure I covered some of this in my last post, but, let me go in to a bit more detail... In short, I really expected the business to take off. To be so successful that we would literally have to turn people away because we could not keep up with the demand.  I guess you could call it arrogance. That is, my take on how I thought things would go leading in to August 6th. I knew how great the breads tasted, and looked for that matter. The test runs we did with potential customers went very well. And really, I saw only the sky as the limit. Ok, yes, the sky is the limit, but, be sure to note there are cloudy days and we cannot always go quite so far. The reality is that the business was so slow coming in to December that we went to a four day week for a few weeks, and I spent countless nights unable to sleep, worrying about how we would generate more income. If I am being very honest, and I am, some days I would cry myself to sleep, wondering what it was I kept doing wrong, which...

There is no better place for me to start than with what I know now, versus what I knew on August 6th, 2018 (day 1).  I think this topic I can cover for hours and hours, but, I will narrow it down to a few things, that may be the most important. Bread On day one, I had this idea that I would bake all kinds of special breads and people would line up and buy them. Really. I thought that by the end of the second week, people would be begging us to get their hands on our breads. Well, that most certainly was not the case. In fact, many people bought bread once, or even twice, and then never came back again.  OUCH!!! How could this be?  Well, that answer is simple, my breads were not what the locals wanted. I even learned in this time that typical Mallorcan bread is made without salt. To me, that is crazy talk, but it is true, indeed. A couple of months ago I went to a bakery not far from ours, to try some bread, I got some, and as I was eating it, I really thought it was a mistake. Then I d...

Hello everyone, it has been 21 days since my last post. When I said I was taking a break, I really did not realize it would be for so long.  Actually, I think I will use this opportunity to change the frequency of my updates. As you recall, many days I really did not have a lot to talk about so it was not good time spent for you, and for me... With that said, I have many things I want to talk about, so, instead of putting them all in to one post, which you could read at once, I will have these posted in pieces over the next several days. But before I tell you what the topics are... Happy New Year!! Feliz Año Nuevo!!  I hope you all have had a lovely transition in to 2019, found many memories from 2018 which brought you smiles, and are now generating new possibilities for yourselves. Back to business.... Over the next several days, a post will come out, covering the following topics: - What I have learned - My expectations versus how things really went last year - More stress than I eve...