Hey Besties! 2025 is upon us and if you have a home bakery, I bet you’re hoping for your best year yet! But let me drop a truth bomb…you may be a magician in the kitchen, but business planning is commonly a downfall for bakery owners! Bestie, it’s ALL about planning! I’m here to help you have a wildly successful year, which includes planning for the bakery holidays AND leveraging downtimes as well! Let me help you make it easier to get the most out of your time throughout the year. I’m kind of an organization queen, it’s my jam, so planning is what I live for. Let’s do this!
Success Favors the Prepared
Do you feel like you’re always trying to play catchup? Rushing your designs, order what you need, make samples, get photos and start sharing with the world? You’re not alone, this is VERY common in our industry, so don’t beat yourself up. Instead, let’s take a new approach for 2025, proactively plan and level-set your work throughout the year. If you do the planning work upfront, you will know exactly when you need to be doing everything to stay ahead of the game. Trust me, this goes a LONG way in lowering your stress level and actually enjoying your business. And honestly, this is a huge part of being a business owner. If you want to enjoy a thriving business, you’ve got to put the planning work in upfront. It’s A LOT less work in the long-run and will help you achieve your goals and grow!
We all know there are certain times of the year that are busier for bakers than others. But guess what? Those lulls in between big holidays can be extremely valuable time for you to achieve other parts of your business! In THIS post, I share all about growing a successful home bakery business, including timelines on how to plan for different types of marketing strategies. Today, I’m providing an updated list of our key bakery holidays and life celebrations for 2025. This is a CRITICAL tool to help you make your annual plan and also make sure you’re making the most out of all these opportunities!
The Best way to use this…it’s not just a list!
Most people are going to look at this or print it off as a helpful resource for upcoming holidays. Sure, you can take that approach and take it one holiday at a time; plan, execute and repeat. But what I’m challenging you to do is look at these bakery holidays and start making decisions for what you want to support in 2025. Can you make changes later? Absolutely. But most bakers can look at these occasions and know if it’s something their clientele will want and drive success for your bakery. Check off which events you plan to support. Then, plug them into your calendar; online or paper, whatever you prefer. And take it a step further by working backwards from each date, adding the steps you need to successfully execute for each of those events.
For example, if you want to offer pre-sale goods for Easter, you’ll want to mark your calendar for April 20. But then also mark the following dates on your calendar. And you can adjust these dates by the timeframes that work best for you and your business. Maybe you have more success promoting and taking orders for 4+ weeks…build it in! The point is, you’re working backwards from all the occasions you want to support and you’re going to do this for ALL the occasions. You then have a complete calendar of exactly what you need to do every day to keep your plans on track!
- Mar 1: Plan Designs and order supplies and packaging
- March 17: Have Samples Complete
- March 19: Have Photos Complete
- March 22: Start promoting!
- March 23-April 11: Receive Orders & Continue to Promote
- April 13-17: Bake, Decorate, Package
- April 18 & 19: Fulfillment of Orders (Pickup/Delivery)
How this method will make your bakery more money
Okay, so we’ve already illustrated why planning is important to manage your schedule and stress level. But using this method will actually help your business be far more successful; let me tell you why. If you preplan your year for baking holidays, you can support more events and sustain more work than if you planned one holiday at a time. Let’s build on the Easter example. If you have all these dates on your calendar, you’ll see that in order to sell pre-sale goods for Teacher’s Appreciation Week, starting May 5, you’ll need to have your designs planned and supplies ordered by March 24. This lands perfectly during the time when you’re promoting and receiving orders for Easter, so you absolutely have time to do this planning and ordering!
However, if you didn’t plan ahead and waited until your Easter orders were out the door, now it’s April 20. You’re pooped, you haven’t planned designs or ordered anything so now you’re in panic mode to come up with something, make samples, take pictures and start promoting with 2 weeks to go. And since you were so rushed, you may not even love your designs or be as successful with orders. Which scenario would you rather have? The latter is a stressful hamster wheel that you do not want to get stuck in.
What if I hate planning?!
If you’re not a planner by nature, you may be cringing at all of this. Honestly, you probably haven’t made it this far. And I fully understand that not everyone likes this aspect of business like I do. But when you decided to turn your love of baking into a business, this is the stuff that helps you crush your goals. Taking the time to plan can be the difference between a really successful year and a really bleak one. It can also be the difference between LOVING your business and hating it. Bestie, please set yourself up for success!
And listen, if it feels like torture, try planning the first 6 months or even the first quarter. But then promise you’re going to do the rest far enough ahead of time, so you don’t get yourself in a bind. And of course, nothing is ever set in stone, you can always make changes.
One reason you started this business is to have freedom and control over your time and schedule. This approach fully supports that lifestyle! This allows you to be able to see your year at a glance! Maybe you really want to dedicate a chunk of time to take some classes, learn a new technique or remodel your kitchen. Or how about take a fabulous vacation?! Well, if you preplan, you can easily see, “Oh, I’m going to have downtime in September! I’m going to schedule my kitchen remodel for then!”
The bottom line is that by taking the time to plan your year now, you will be less stressed, feel in control, make more money, enjoy your craft along with all the other reasons you started this business. THAT is exactly what I want for you. Oh, and one more tidbit of advice? You don’t have to sell goods for EVERY holiday or event! Plan and create for the occasions that are important to you and your clientele. Maybe you know Kentucky Derby Day is huge for your community, or conversely, you know it’s not! Just plan accordingly! And don’t worry about what other bakers are doing, you should be laser-focused on your business and the clientele you support. YOU are calling the shots, don’t feel pressured to do ALL the things.
WHERE CAN I FIND THIS FABULOUS BAKing HOLIDAYS RESOURCE?!
Right here! Download and start planning! Simply click on the preview image below for the automatic download! You can thank me later when your life is all organized and you have low stress!
I also included a few extra lines if you want to add additional holidays, events or traditions you want to plan for too.
I hope you find this resource and this strategy all about planning for 2025 baking holidays to be helpful! I’m literally here to help YOU build the business of your dreams and balance the rest of your life while doing it!
And if you’re not already receiving my weekly newsletter every Friday, you are missing out! Never miss out on a bakery business strategy, resource, new recipe, technique, tutorial and all the free printables! Happy Baking, Bestie!
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