wholesale

[simo]

I am currently thinking about opening a very small wholesale/retail bakery. Pastries and some breads etc. I sucessfully owned and operated a 200+ casual fine dining restaurant for many years and know the kitchen very well,including the business end. However I don't know much about wholesale. Are there any general guidelines concerning mark-up from food cost etc. or any othr info. out there that might be helpful?

[baker1]

Hi there, I owned a retail/wholesale bakery for almost 20 yrs, I sold it last Feb, the problem with wholesale is you will only get 60% of the retail dollar.
So you need to be very fast at benchwork, I concentrated on croissants and geared up to produce. It requires more than double the sales volume to make the same profit, then subtract delivery and packaging and that assumes they will ever pay their bill. I am still owed thousands , I'll never see it and don't really care anymore.
Its a tough a game, the client doesn't give a hoot what ingredients you use, theiur first priority is price, " can I make a buck off this stuff or not".

I would caution against the high profile wholesale accounts such as Hotels or big ticket retailers such as neiman marcus , they put me on 60 days payable, I immediately stopped selling to them. The smaller mom and pop accounts are the best, cafe's, other bakeries .

I bought a catering business, I can do more business in one day than I did in a month of HARD baking and I don't have to show up for work til 9am. I implore you to consider a cafe instead, stand alone bakeries are dinosaurs. I am so happy to be out of full time baking.
Regards, Gerard