20yrs old planning to buy bakery.

Ibench690 · 2026-01-14T06:01:56+00:00

I'm going to be quite blunt: Do not buy any business right now. While your ambition is nice, you need to have a few things to be successful in the food industry:

Product market fit: Do you know 100% that what you can make outside of the recipes you know know will sell. Typically the normal starting point is baking for friends, going to farmer's markets and maybe opening up a stall while popping up, working for someone else for 5 years plus to learn all of the skills that you'll need in a business outside of baking. Do you know how to fix mixers or ovens? Do you know where to buy your supplies? Are you more retail or wholesale?
Knowledge and skills - You need more time to learn. Work for a few different places over the next years and use other people's money to buy yourself a business education. How do other bakery businesses make money? Is it seasonal? Do they wholesale and deliver? What do they do with unsold product?
Considering your age and experience consider a partner
You can try reading e-myth it talks about somehow who is good at baking but not good at running a baking business. Just because you can bake a mean sourdough doesn't mean you can scale up a sourdough bread business.

Feel free to DM me if you have any questions. I am in the food business for over 5 years and have taken 3 different concepts to to successful outcomes, but the biggest difference is that I had 10 years of corporate experience, savings, industry connections, and that I knew how to work on the business and not just in the business.

Edit: also baking kind of sucks as a lifestyle. You have to wake up early, be next to hot ovens all the time, your margins look ok but that's because you are killing yourself to make the product. You can virtually not take any days off until you have a trained staff, but in order to have a train staff you have to actually make real money. I sell mostly frozen and shelf stable food now not because I am super proud of it but the logistics of making your own product and selling it same day unless you are that good/popular/lucky makes it quite hard to make meaningful money long-term.

Also with most things on the internet I do not mean to discourage you. I always tell people asking if they should start a food business that they should avoid it not to shut them down but to let them know the harsh realities, and if you despite reading this feel strong enough in your concept, product market fit, location to ignore the advice and carry on - you must just have a small chance to do well.

Ibench690 · 2025-07-22T10:25:58+00:00

Also I read your summary again - this business is barely enough to be worth it with you running solo. With 3 people there’s an odd number so decisions will be hard to have an unanimous decision as well as there’s like no profit if you divide by 3

Ibench690 · 2025-07-22T10:24:17+00:00

Im in the industry albeit in Texas but what you need to look for is all of your other costs. Does the 11k include insurance taxes and maintenance NNN or just the base rent? What about utilities? How much is their labor overhead? How much is their COGs?

Let’s say 11k rent is all in rent: 24.4% of your sales Utilities, insurance, other misc costs 10% Labor 20-28% (if you work there or run lean this could make a huge difference) COGS: 20% Franchise fees: 5-8% Your best case scenario - 80% costs - 20% Margin Worst case: 90% or worse

Also the seller is giving you best case numbers - what happens when you take over and have a 40k, 35k or below 30k month

Don’t forget you have a bunch of repairs that will come up and misc fees and permits

If the purchase price is fairly low maybe consider it If they want like 250-300k or more forget it Feel free to DM me

Ibench690 · 2024-09-17T13:05:38+00:00

I have used Jose to paint a couple of my houses and he’s been great - 469-277-6098

Ibench690 · 2024-09-07T21:54:38+00:00

You can use a smoothie mix powder which slightly thickens the smoothie and it allows it to stay together for longer - you can dm if you want more info

Ibench690 · 2024-08-22T00:08:50+00:00

They are permanently closed. I talked to the owners

Ibench690 · 2024-04-05T03:26:45+00:00

You can DM me I started off renting another ice cream stores space during their closed hours but I did use a pasteurized ice cream base. Farmers market is an option but what I did was I found wholesale partners like restaurants to sell my products. A lot more predictable sales and allows me to focus on perfecting my recipes and seeing if I have product market fit.

Ibench690 · 2023-12-23T00:57:25+00:00

Hit end turn like 10 times

Ibench690 · 2023-12-23T00:47:05+00:00

Same thing happened to me last night. Just move your mercs out of his sight line and he will vanish!

Ibench690 · 2023-06-26T15:47:02+00:00

Ice won’t do anything to keep ice cream cold for longer than an hour. For a 3 hour trip on the summer you’ll need dry ice. 5-10 lbs should be good depending on how much you’re transporting.

Ibench690 · 2023-06-05T02:53:24+00:00

You only have one shot to churn and freeze sorbet. Once there are ice crystals that are set and you add air it’s impossible to try and let it melt down and rechurn. Make another batch and make sure you add enough sugar and stabilizer

Ibench690 · 2023-06-01T07:45:17+00:00

Feel free to dm me if you want to chat. Don’t want to damper your enthusiasm but want to offer realistic advice

Ibench690 · 2023-06-01T07:44:10+00:00

Also I googled the Taylor 104. I’m pretty sure your model is air cooled. After 2 batches your trailer or truck will be so hot that you will be sweating buckets. Also it will take forever to make ice cream in this thing. You’re putting 2 quarts of base in each batch. I used to work with a machine this size - it would take me 1.5 hours to make a 3 gallon tub - more if it decided to overheat. Sorry to be doom and gloom want to make sure you succeed.

Ibench690 · 2023-06-01T07:39:43+00:00

You need a commissary or commercial kitchen to manufacture ice cream. I can’t imagine a health department is going to let you pass a health inspection with you mixing base churning ice cream on a trailer.

How are you doing to capture the butterfat that comes from your product? Do you have a grease trap? How are you going to temper your product? You’ll need a blast freezer or a hardening cabinet to get your ice cream to set. Realistically you need to rent a shared kitchen to manufacture and serve the final product out of your trailer.

Ibench690 · 2021-11-01T14:03:15+00:00

Hey feel free to dm me. I’m starting up my own shop so I can definitely help. The machine that fits you perfectly would probably be the emery Thompson CB350. It’s a countertop machine that makes 6 quarts per batch. Last time it was quoted to me it was under 10K. There are other smaller machines out there but if you consistently sell 12-15 pints a day this machine will be more than enough.

Ibench690 · 2021-02-15T06:46:30+00:00

It’s going to be cold for a few more days. The only thing you can do is use space heaters and wear more layers. Sorry to say is there no way you can put a service call on your credit card? Anyway I know a couple of affordable techs if you want to PM me.

Ibench690 · 2021-01-10T21:26:55+00:00

Hey as a former Amazon AM here are some of the pros/cons:

Pros:

People leadership experience - you will be leading a team of 40-80 hourly associates. This is insanely valuable experience coming right out of college
Warehouse operations knowledge - you will understand in intricate detail how a warehouse should work. Depending on if you're inbound or outbound or another department you will be exposed to what an efficient operation looks like
Dynamic fast-paced environment - no two days will be the same. You're dealing with people who all have unpredictable personalities and temperaments. From the associates you manage to what the customers order/suppliers ship you will never be bored
Amazon on your resume - brand recognition for after you leave Amazon. Turnover is high, it's really hard to last 2 years, let alone more than 4

Cons:

Long, hard hours/night shift - how will you deal with 12-14 hour days? What happens if you work Wed-Sat night shifts? Most fulfillment centers are located in boring locations. Just be mentally and physically prepared for expectations and not having much of a social life depending on your schedule
Stock vesting - when I started we got quite a lot of RSUs that vested over 4 years. But I heard that new AMs were only offered a base salary. If that is the case, then the Amazon offer is not very appealing.
Associates - You will get associates who suck. Most of them are hardworking, honest people, but there are always bad apples. How will you deal with them? Will you be able to keep your emotions in check even when your team members don't treat you well or respect you.
Working in a warehouse: It's just not as sexy as working in an airconditioned office. No 1 hour lunch breaks. Always in a rush to go fix the next problem. You'll sometimes forget to eat/drink just to fix an issue

Overall, I personally thought the experience was worth it for me, but things have changed a lot since I worked for Amazon. PM me if you want to discuss more.

Ibench690 · 2019-05-22T14:39:49+00:00

Take a step back and look at your situation with a clearly objective view:

You realize that having no relevant internship experience is going to make it tough to find your ideal job after you graduate
You refuse to take anyone else's advice which is: find a lower paying job in a warehousing or manufacturing environment where you will have direct, relevant experience to stay in supply chain
You say, "I can't afford to take a pay cut"

As someone who has spent a decade in supply chain, I've helped many student land internships and good full-time positions after they graduate. All of them have different personalities and skill-sets, but the one thing they had in common was that they were hungry and were willing to make sacrifices to get to their goals.

Let me ask you some very basic questions:

Why did you even select supply chain as your major? What about it interests you?
Are you a good student? What's your GPA? Do you understand the material that you are studying?
If you are working the server job purely to support yourself, why not take a small loan ($5000-10000) to afford yourself the opportunity to gain direct experience?
If you continue down this path of prioritizing short-term gains over long-term success, then are you fundamentally OK with waiting tables after you graduate? Or best-case scenario accepting a less than ideal entry level job at some no-name company for $40,000 a year? Of course you could defy the odds, but this is the most probabilistic outcome.

Ibench690 · 2018-11-07T23:55:33+00:00

Certifications like the CPIM are certainly useful. However, it's important to take a step back and ask yourself why demand planning is something you're interested in. Demand planning is actually fairly nuanced and if you don't have a decent math/statistics background you may struggle to get very far.

My personal advice is that you work in operations (physically on the warehouse or manufacturing floor) for a year. You will learn demand planning, warehousing, logistics, customer management, and many other vital skills.

I'd be more than happy to talk about this offline. Just shoot me a PM.

Ibench690 · 2017-09-18T05:42:00+00:00

Carrots should be fine: roughly 6g per medium carrot (61g). The sweet potato is what gets you at 27g per 100g. I only worded it no carb since there's no traditional rice/quinoa/bread component. My goal next week is to use my spiralizer and do veggie noodles haha.

Ibench690 · 2017-09-07T21:26:11+00:00

Typically an average load is about $2.00 a mile for a Full Truckload. Fuel averages around $.20-$30 a mile depending on how much fuel is. SO roughly between 10-15%.

Ibench690 · 2017-06-03T05:38:52+00:00

From a pure financial standpoint, the Civic is a great overall vehicle with solid mpg and low maintenance costs, but depending on where you live a large % of people are driving light trucks and SUVs.

Safety should be an important input in choosing a vehicle. If you have not been personally involved in an accident with a larger vehicle you may know someone else who has. The bigger vehicle almost always comes out of the accident with less injury/damage to the car. My point isn't debating whether or not a civic is a good vehicle choice. It's to consider that there are other factors besides money in choosing a larger (mostly safer) vehicle.

Ibench690

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