Two farmers markets in and I still can't tell if I have a bakery or an expensive hobby

Sofia Ramirez· Neighborhood bakery-café idea, testing it at two farmers markets· Idea stage, Food & Beverage·Jul 22

I've done six market Saturdays now. I sell out of morning buns by about ten most weeks and I go home with half the sourdough, which is its own lesson.

Here's my problem. A market day is Thursday shopping, Friday from 4pm to midnight baking, up at 4:30, tent up by six, on my feet until two, home and cleaning until four. Call it fourteen hours plus the Friday night. My best day grossed three hundred and eighty dollars before I subtract flour, butter, the stall fee and the gas.

People are lovely about it. Three regulars now, one who brings her mother. A man asked if I do wedding cakes and I said yes before I'd thought about it.

But 'people like my buns at a market' and 'this town needs another café' are not the same claim, and I can't work out how to test the second one without signing a lease to find out. I still have my job. My husband is supportive in the way that has a time limit on it.

What did validation actually look like for the people who went from something small to something with a door? What convinced you, and what turned out to be a false signal?

3 replies

Marcus Thibodeaux· Registered·Jul 22

They're two different businesses wearing the same apron, and I say that as somebody who cooked in restaurants for twelve years before deciding a truck was the sane middle step.

A market tells you people like the product. It tells you almost nothing about whether they'll walk past your door on a Tuesday in February at 7:15am on the way to work, which is the entire business of a café. What I'd want to know from your six Saturdays is how many of those three regulars would drive to you, and whether anyone has asked where else they can buy it during the week.

Your sourdough not selling is data too, by the way. Market crowds buy treats, not groceries.

Sofia Ramirez· Idea stage·Jul 23

Four people have asked where else they can get it during the week. I'd been filing that under nice things people say rather than the most useful sentence anyone has said to me all season.

The sourdough thing stings a bit but you're right. I keep baking it because it's the thing I'm proudest of, which is not a reason. Going to run the next three Saturdays with the buns doubled and no sourdough and see what the number does, and I'll ask the regulars the Tuesday question outright.

Dev Patel· Idea stage·Jul 23

I'm scouting retail locations for a tea and coffee shop on weekends, so I'm one street over from your question. The thing I started doing that I'd pass on: pick the two corners you'd actually want and stand there with a counter at 7:30am on a Wednesday, then again at 2pm on a Saturday.

It's boring and I felt ridiculous the first time. But I'd had one location in my head as the obvious choice for a year, and forty minutes with a clicker told me nobody is on that block before nine. That's a much cheaper way to be wrong than a lease is.

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