Unpopular Opinions About the Baking Industry YOU Need to Hear!

The baking industry is full of myths and “advice” that everyone seems to follow blindly—until you realize it’s actually holding you back. After spending over a decade building my own baking business, I’ve learned to take this advice with a grain of salt. So let’s set the record straight: here are my unpopular opinions about the baking industry and why I don’t buy into the common advice.

More “Revenue Streams” won’t fix a BROKEN foundation!

They’ll just create more work for you and confusion for your audience.

So please, ❌ STOP listening to this advice. That’s the wrong move. ❌

There are way too many “baking coaches” pushing this idea that “if you can’t sell cakes, just start selling classes, courses, or downloadables” to other bakers instead. Basically, if you can’t figure out how to make your bakery profitable, the solution is… to teach other bakers how to make theirs profitable. Make it make sense.

Here’s the problem: If you haven’t mastered your first business, why complicate it by starting another one?

If you shift from selling to customers to selling to bakers, guess what? You’re no longer building a thriving baking business—you’re creating more competition, confusing your audience, and stretching yourself even thinner than you were before.

There. I said it. Come for me.

👉🏽 This is why so many bakery owners are distracted, overwhelmed, and struggling to make money. Instead of piling on more tasks and more income streams, the real move is to focus on mastering the business YOU STARTED first.

✅ Perfect your products

✅ Nail your marketing & branding

✅ Get confident in closing sales

✅ Create irresistible offers

Before you add anything else, build a business that actually makes money first. Period.

I love you, and I wanna see you grow & scale—not burn out and quit.

Good Products and LAZY Marketing NEVER work!

You're spending wayyyyy too much time perfecting your products. You have no problem dropping $300 on an in-person class to learn how to dip caramel apples, decorate Easter cookies, or learn how to make a buttercream heart cake- thinking it will up-level your skills. And while having good products is important, lemme be clear:

No matter how good your products are, if you don’t know how to SELL them, you’ll never make money.

Lazy marketing looks like this:

👉🏽 You stayed up all night perfecting a cake design, maybe you have TONS of other orders to fill so instead of waiting for good lighting and setting up a backdrop, you snapped a quick photo at 2 AM and posted it the next morning. Then you wonder why it didn’t get engagement.

The hard truth? Nobody cares how many kids you have, how many orders you have to fill, or that you have a full-time job. If you really want to run a successful business, you have to be methodical, plan things out, and be strategic with your time.

When I started my business, I had three kids under the age of six. We had just filed for bankruptcy, I had lost my job, and I knew that if this business didn’t make money immediately, I’d have to go back to the corporate world. That pressure forced me to be intentional from day one.

I didn’t have time to waste—I had to ask myself:

✔️ How can I get this product in front of customers?

✔️ How can I get them excited about it?

✔️ How can I find more customers who LOVE this and buy from me?

We live in a world full of distractions and busyness. Your job is to get people’s attention. 👉🏼Attention is currency. If you’re lazy with the thing that matters most—getting people to slow their scroll, click the link in your bio, and place an order—then your business will always be a struggle.

Your product could be the most amazing thing since sliced bread, but if your marketing isn’t on point, no one will ever know about it.

More Customers WON’T fix your business!

Too many bakers are obsessed with constantly chasing new customers instead of nurturing the ones they already have. Here are three BASIC ways to increase your sales: 1) Increase the frequency of your customers 2) Increase the average transaction of your customers and 3) (THE HARDEST) Find NEW customers.

WHY Is #3 the hardest? 🤔 Because on AVERAGE, it takes 12-15 touch points with your business BEFORE a new customer purchases with you. With that information, it should light a fire under your a** to find ways to better SERVE the customers you already do have.

Instead of spending all your time marketing to strangers, trying to get them to trust you, focus on maximizing the value of the customers who ALREADY LOVE what you offer.

Ask yourself:

✔️ Are you offering easy add-ons? Think of a candle & a ribbon for $1.00 extra.

✔️ Are you up-selling in a way that feels natural? An example we used at my bakery was if they purchased three cupcakes, normally it would go into a box made for four. So I would encourage my employees to ask the customer, “Hey, I know you’re getting three cupcakes but it does go into this box for four so would you like to add one more? You do get a bit of a price break on each when you grab four?” And almost EVERY SINGLE TIME, the customer would say YES!

✔️ Are you encouraging repeat orders and building loyalty? In my bakery, I used SQUARE for my payment processing system and it was AMAZING because they had marketing tools built into it so all my customers would have to do was input their phone number and they would get discounts every week for 10% off their next purchase- encouraging them to come back in.

A customer who has already bought from you is 10x more likely to buy again than someone new. If you’re constantly hustling for NEW CUSTOMERS, but ignoring the ones you’ve already won over, you’re working way harder than you need to.

You really wanna think about the LIFE-TIME value of a customer.

Just because you’re BOOKED & BUSY doesn’t mean you’re PROFITABLE!

“I’m so busy, I must be doing great!” But are you?

If you’re overworked, constantly filling orders, BUT still not seeing the difference in your bank account- then you have a PRICING issue. Being booked out means nothing if you’re undercharging, taking on low-value orders, or running yourself into the ground for little to nothing. Success isn’t measured by how busy you are; it’s measured by how profitable you are.

If you’re reading this and find yourself questioning whether or not you’re charging properly, WATCH THIS video and then grab my PRICING FOR PROFIT training- this will walk you through step-by-step HOW TO PRICE YOUR PRODUCTS FOR PROFIT!

I know some of these opinions might sting a little—but they come from a place of experience and LOVE. The baking industry is tough, but like ANY OTHER BUSINESS, if you’re not thinking strategically you’ll find yourself stuck in an exhausting cycle of overwhelm and burnout. So instead of following the crowd, get out of your comfort zone, and focus on building a SOLID, scalable foundation for your BUSINESS!