A bakery café makes its own pastries and bread and sells them with coffee, so it has two businesses' costs under one roof. The baking is cheap per item, a butter croissant costs about 60 cents to make and sells for $4.50, but it needs bakers in before dawn, ovens and a hood, and it leaves a share unsold at close. The café side brings the coffee margin and the lunch trade, and needs a counter staffed all day. That's why the plan turns on wages and the build-out: a bakery café costs far more to open than a coffee shop and takes longer to pay back. Bread sold as loaves, cakes to order and a little wholesale to restaurants use the ovens in the hours the café is quiet. The plan below works in categories per $100 of sales. In the example, a Spokane bakery café opens with $283,500, ends its first year about $23,000 behind before the owner's pay while sales build, and makes about $4,200 a month at full speed. Below is each part of the plan, the first year month by month, the startup budget, and a free template.
The short version
- Describe the café in a paragraph: the street, the mornings, what you bake, what's missing nearby, the goals.
- Cost each item: ingredients by weight, packaging and the card fee; then allow for what's left at close.
- Plan sales by category per $100: pastries, bread, coffee, lunch, cakes and wholesale.
- Wages are the biggest cost: bakers early, counter staff all day.
- The build-out, ovens and hood make the start expensive; budget working cash for a slow first half year.
- Use the ovens' quiet hours for loaves, cakes and wholesale.
- TaroStack makes each pastry a recipe and each bake a batch, with what's left at close on record. More below.
Part 1: the business description
Cherry Street Bakery Café, a made-up bakery café in Spokane, Washington, writes:
Cherry Street Bakery Café is a 2,200-square-foot bakery and café with 40 seats, baking croissants, morning buns, cookies and country loaves every morning, serving espresso drinks, and making lunch sandwiches on its own bread. It takes cake orders and sells bread to four restaurants. In its first year it aims to reach $43,000 of sales a month.
Part 2: what an item costs
| Item | Ingredients | Packaging | Card fee | Cost | Price | Cost share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Butter croissant | $0.41 | $0.05 | $0.14 | $0.60 | $4.50 | 13.3% |
| Morning bun | $0.48 | $0.05 | $0.14 | $0.67 | $4.75 | 14.1% |
| Country sourdough loaf | $1.35 | $0.15 | $0.27 | $1.77 | $9.00 | 19.7% |
| Turkey sandwich on house bread | $3.10 | $0.20 | $0.39 | $3.69 | $13.00 | 28.4% |
| Latte, 12 oz | $1.02 | $0.20 | $0.15 | $1.37 | $5.00 | 27.4% |
A croissant is mostly butter: 30 grams of its 41 cents. The category costs in Part 4 run higher than these single items, because they carry what's left at close, day-old discounts, staff meals and dearer items like fruit tarts. How a bakery works out its cost of goods is in how to calculate COGS for a bakery.
Part 3: customers and staffing
Two bakers start at 4 a.m.; the doors open at 7. Mornings are pastries and coffee, lunch is sandwiches and soup, and afternoons are slow, which is when the loaves for tomorrow's restaurants are shaped and the cakes decorated. The plan expects about a sixth of the morning bake to be left at close, sold the next day at half price or given away.
Part 4: what each category earns
| Category | Sales | Variable cost | Contribution | Margin | Hundreds a month at full speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pastries and cookies baked in house | $100.00 | $30.00 | $70.00 | 70.0% | 140 |
| Bread, retail loaves | $100.00 | $28.00 | $72.00 | 72.0% | 50 |
| Espresso drinks and coffee | $100.00 | $27.00 | $73.00 | 73.0% | 110 |
| Lunch on house bread | $100.00 | $36.00 | $64.00 | 64.0% | 80 |
| Whole cakes and custom orders | $100.00 | $32.00 | $68.00 | 68.0% | 30 |
| Wholesale bread to restaurants | $100.00 | $40.00 | $60.00 | 60.0% | 20 |
At full speed the café sells $43,000 a month and keeps $29,790, 69.3%; pastries bring $9,800 of it and coffee $8,030.
Part 5: the first year, month by month
Fixed costs are $25,600 every month: rent ($5,000), wages ($17,000), utilities and oven gas ($1,600), insurance ($400), the register and software ($250), oven and espresso machine service ($350), ads ($400), and other costs ($600). Sales start at half of full speed:
| Month | Sales | Profit | Cash, year to date |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $21,500 | −$10,705 | −$10,705 |
| 2 | $24,100 | −$8,902 | −$19,607 |
| 3 | $26,700 | −$7,102 | −$26,709 |
| 4 | $29,200 | −$5,371 | −$32,080 |
| 5 | $31,800 | −$3,571 | −$35,651 |
| 6 | $34,400 | −$1,768 | −$37,419 |
| 7 | $36,700 | −$172 | −$37,591 |
| 8 | $38,400 | $1,004 | −$36,587 |
| 9 | $40,000 | $2,110 | −$34,477 |
| 10 | $41,300 | $3,014 | −$31,463 |
| 11 | $43,000 | $4,190 | −$27,273 |
| 12 | $43,000 | $4,190 | −$23,083 |
The year's sales are $410,100, and the café ends it $23,083 behind, before the owner's pay. It breaks even at about $37,000 of sales a month, in the eighth month. The lowest cash point, −$37,591 in month 7, is covered by the $50,000 of working cash with about $12,400 to spare. Wages are two-thirds of the fixed costs, and every pastry baked and not sold is a cost with no sale; those two lines, more than the coffee, decide whether the café makes money.
Part 6: the startup budget
| Item | Example |
|---|---|
| Build-out, kitchen and hood | $90,000 |
| Deck and convection ovens | $35,000 |
| Espresso machine and grinders | $25,000 |
| Walk-in cooler and refrigeration | $18,000 |
| Mixers and proofer | $15,000 |
| Display cases | $12,000 |
| Furniture | $12,000 |
| Lease deposit and first month | $10,000 |
| Smallwares and sheet pans | $6,000 |
| Opening inventory | $6,000 |
| Register | $2,500 |
| Licenses and permits | $2,000 |
| Working cash | $50,000 |
| Total to start | $283,500 |
The $233,500 before working cash takes about four and a half years to earn back at full speed, so used ovens, or a space that already has a hood, are worth looking for. A wholesale-only start is in bakery business plan, and a café without the bakery in coffee shop business plan.
Get the template
Download the bakery cafe business plan workbook. Four sheets: your categories, each per $100 of sales with its variable cost and hundreds a month at full speed; the first year, month by month, with sales ramping up, profit, cash, the first profitable month, the lowest cash point and whether the working cash covers it; your fixed costs; and the startup budget. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
The plan uses one pastry cost and one share left at close. The kitchen bakes a different count every morning, butter prices move, and how many croissants went to day-old last Tuesday is a guess by Friday.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack makes each pastry a recipe and each bake a batch, with what's left at close on record.
Pastries as recipes. A croissant is a recipe by weight, its butter, flour and yeast, so its cost moves when butter does.
Each bake a batch. The morning bake is a batch with its count, and what's left at close is recorded as waste with a reason, reported by item.
Lots with dates. Butter, flour and cream come in as lots with their dates, and the oldest goes first.
| The job | Notebook | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| What a croissant costs this month | Worked out once | True cost from the recipe and batch |
| What was left at close | Not recorded | Waste by reason and item |
| Which butter to use first | Remembered | First-expired-first-out |
Recipes, batches, waste and lots are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.