Mom, can you bring your bread for the year ahead? Or why my production won't bake anything anymore

DISCLAIMER: The article is implicated by the blog author based on an interview with V. Nikitina, until recently co-owner of a bakery production in Voronezh.

Nikitin-khleb bread production closed on October 8, 2024, exactly 9 years later: from October 8, 2015.

In 2015, my partner and I opened our own bread baking shop.

In 2018, our bread sold like hot cakes, the workshop was expanded to 350 sq.m.

During the 2020 pandemic, the business grew by leaps and bounds to 25 of its own kiosks throughout Voronezh.

We started making up to 5.5 million rubles in revenue per month.

We bought new equipment, opened new outlets, baked 1,700 loaves a day, but in 2024, revenue fell sharply, and expenses also increased sharply.

I’m writing this article while my eye is still twitching, and the numbers and details are fresh in my memory, what it means to own and manage a bakery business for 9 years.

Bread educational program

Recently (a couple of thousand years ago), people realized that if you take grains of wheat and rub them between heavy stones, you will get flour.

In Rus', wheat did not always survive, and the Slavic brothers came up with the idea of ​​doing the same thing with rye grains.

Now, so that children can eat Darnitsky’s crust on the way from the store, you need to feed them flour:

A. Yeast

B. Lactic acid bacteria

Yeast

If you look at the world from the yeast's point of view, you can conclude that it is more their planet than ours. Yeast lives in the air, water, and flour (1 gram of flour contains 10 to the fifth yeast cells).

Yeast is a single-celled fungus that eats sugar and releases carbon dioxide and alcohol. Therefore, not only those with a sweet tooth, but also alcoholics should worship yeast.

This is what the main baking formula looks like:

C6H12O6 → 2C2H5OH (needed by Uncle Mitya) + 2CO2 (needed by the dough for leavening).

The carbon dioxide bubbles get stuck in the dough and loosen it, giving it a porous structure. Visually this is registered as a rise in the dough. Typically, artificially grown baker's yeast is used in bread baking.

A loaf can only be made with yeast, and rye bread cannot be prepared without acidifying the dough and acidifying it with sourdough.

Lactic acid bacteria

Lactic acid bacteria, like yeast, loosen and lift the dough. An infusion of lactic acid bacteria and natural yeast is called sourdough.

Lactic acid bacteria are not as tough guys as yeast and produce less gas. Therefore, the bread’s rise is due more to the yeast that got into the leaven from flour or air.

Yeast-free bread

Sourdough breads are often called yeast-free breads in order to catch up with the trend for a healthy lifestyle. But, strictly speaking, bread will not rise on lactic acid bacteria alone. It’s just that in sourdough it is not baker’s yeast that rules, but the yeast that is contained in the flour or in the air.

Large bakeries use plain yeast, since it is produced artificially in yeast factories.

And experts call sourdough, in which yeast from the air or from flour rises, wild, because instead of just one clear strain of yeast, up to 20 different species will live in a jar of sourdough.

In total, yeast-free bread is purely marketing. But sourdough bread still has its own taste and aroma, so from the point of view of benefits, science has no information, but from the point of view of taste, sourdough bread can indeed be more aromatic and tastier than bread with yeast. It’s simply more correct to write on the packaging/sign not unleavened bread, but bread without baker’s yeast.

And the yeast itself dies at temperatures above 45 degrees, while even the middle of the bread/loaf warms up to 90 degrees. That is, all bread is made without yeast.

And even if yeast survived in bread, science would not find any problems with it; on the contrary, today you can buy yeast in the pharmacy that works as a probiotic.

Making sourdough bread from scratch

The process of making our bread looked like this.

1. Preparing sourdough

We used a hop starter – honey, water, flour and hops. We make this mixture once, and then the process of working with the starter looks like this: a daughter starter is separated from the mother starter, which goes into a batch of bread, and the mother starter is fed further. Usually honey or flour. Wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria multiply there.

The mother's starter lives like this for six months, then we mix a new one.

Men worked as dough handlers (RUB 3,600/shift), as they had to lift 50-liter pots.

The technologist was my partner and, at first, also my husband, he trained the production manager (50,000 rubles), who already controlled all processes in production.

2. Kneading test

Now part of the starter needs to be combined with flour and water to get the dough. With yeast, bread rises quite quickly; with sourdough, this process takes longer and is less predictable. 1 batch of sourdough bread – 10 hours, batch of yeast bread – 3 hours. Leave for 2 hours.

To knead the dough on an industrial scale you will need dough mixers (300,000 ₽).

The dough should stretch like chewing gum, if it doesn't it may break as it rises – this is the reason for the large holes that sometimes appear in loaves.

3. Forming dough

The prepared dough goes to the molders (RUB 2,900/shift). The usual brick shape was used more often.

Everything seems simple – you need to put the dough into molds (5,000 ₽ for all forms), but not everything is so simple.

You need to mold quickly, because while the dough is being molded, the chemical process continues, and if you mold for a long time, it will settle. A basin of 200 kg of dough was poured into molds in 20 minutes – this is a difficult job.

Later we bought a dough divider (300,000 ₽) – it divides the dough into pieces according to weight, and it became a little easier.

4. Let the dough rest while proofing

The dough scattered across the molds must now stand at the required humidity and temperature (+38) in a proofer (200,000 ₽) in order to rise.

In the cabinet, the dough sits on carts that look like a structure for trays in a cafeteria. This is done by the baker (RUB 3,600/shift).

5. Baking bread

The same baker transports a cart from the proofing station to the oven (300,000 ₽).

We baked in diesel ovens, and many people use electric ovens; I pressed a button and the oven did everything itself; a diesel oven saved on electricity, but was more difficult to operate. Halfway through the process, bakers add water to make the bread a little shiny.

6. We knock out bread from molds

All that remains is to knock the bread out of the molds, place it on a bench, and give it time to cool.

7. We pack bread

Pickers (RUB 2,900/shift) put bread into bags and orders so that drivers (RUB 2,500/shift) don’t get confused.

Now a child can do this on the way home from the store.

The workshop and molds are washed, and the next day the cycle repeats.

First, we invested 2.2 million rubles in the business, and then purchased additional equipment.

The business was started according to a franchise-type scheme. Therefore, in addition to the equipment, we paid a one-time payment of about 800,000 rubles to the founder of the Diveevsky Bread company. In return, we received a recipe for hop starter, a proofer, a list of equipment and an estimate for opening that was 2 times less than what we got.

Bread production income

Baking bread is only half the problem; the main problem is selling the bread. I described the revenue receipts using the example of an average-good month.

Retail chain – 200,000 ₽

At one of the exhibitions, managers of a large retail chain tried our bread. This is how we encountered networks.

Each network has its own Talmud according to the rules of work, 8 pages long, and you will pay for everything that you did not read or did not understand. The networks are ruled by legal departments as stale as bread, even once when we were arguing, I asked:

Who is your chief legal or procurement officer?

But the lawyers decided.

There was often a problem that decisions were made by Moscow, and local managers only helped to talk to Moscow. One large chain has a 15% quota for local producers, so in Voronezh we negotiated directly with the decision maker.

We didn’t go to AromatVill. At that time they had a strange logistics system. To get to the AromatVill stores in Voronezh, I had to send bread from Voronezh to St. Petersburg to their warehouse, so that from there it would come back to Voronezh, which is especially painful for a product where freshness is crucial.

If you sell clothes, then Wildberries or Ozone will take the commission from you, and if you produce food, retail chains will. And there are many of them here too. I’ll write out the numbers on the back of online bread sales of 1 million rubles.

1. VAT – minus 110,000 ₽

Since our legal entity is not subject to VAT, the networks paid VAT themselves and simply added it to the price. Later, such a shop was closed, and we had to enter into an agreement with the VAT trading house and sell through it.

2. Marketing – 50,000 ₽

To get into a network magazine that no one reads, pay from 2 to 10%. You may ask, what if I don’t need to go to the magazine?

3. Listing – 25,000 ₽

This is just a fancy name for payment for being allowed to sell from them.

4. Discounts – 100,000 ₽

The marketing department of the network, which you sponsor, helps you sell shares, which also reduce your profits.

5. Fines – 20,000 ₽

If the driver does not have a health certificate, prepare 20% of the cost of the consignment.

If they unloaded it in the wrong place, prepare 20% of the cost of the goods

If the label is not designed according to the rules, prepare 20% of the cost of the product

If the goods did not arrive on time, prepare 20% of the cost of the goods

Product of poor quality – prepare 20% of the cost of the product

The goods arrived less than expected – prepare 20% of the cost of the goods

If the pallets are dirty, prepare 20% of the cost of the goods

I was fined only once, but it was for 200,000 rubles at once and I distributed it approximately.

And with only 1 million rubles of sales in the networks, there remained about 550,000 rubles, which barely covered the production cost.

And all the bread that the chain did not sell is returned to you.

But how come they didn’t sell it?! You've been added to the network magazine!

Recently a law was passed that chains cannot return unsold bread to the manufacturer, but they found a way out. Since at a distance the network understands the sales of this or that bread, they simply take back in money what they previously returned in the form of bread.

Given the number of different payments, it is not difficult to disguise the “return tax”. That is, the law is nominally observed, but in fact the manufacturer still pays for the return. Well, what can you do, everyone has their own bread.

In order for the network to allow you to pay all this, you will also need to pay a one-time entry fee (about 25%). For example, if you plan to sell for 1 million, you will pay 250,000 rubles one-time and irrevocably. You will be paid money from sales with a delay of 15 days. That is, for 15 days we supplied bread, and these 15 deliveries always lay unpaid.

I think for a manufacturer to make money under these conditions, they need a huge sales volume and a financial cushion. The rest will thank you if they work to zero.

Having eaten all this, I tried to get into the net without getting caught in the net. I was offered a point in the checkout area of ​​the large Karusel hypermarket.

Traffic capacity was promised to be 1,000 people, next to the hyper checkout area, rent for 10 sq.m – 80,000 ₽, deposit 80,000 ₽. We did renovations for 2 months, and for another 2 months we worked at a loss until we closed. It was Easter in April, and at Easter revenues are usually 3-4 times more than usual, but this point also went into the negative. And if you don’t make money on Easter, then things will get really bad.

Considering the problems described, we quickly began to think about our own stalls for selling bread.

Kiosk network – 3.2 million ₽

To open your stall, you will need: a sign, repairs, shelves, scales, a cash register, a terminal.

The kiosks were rented, so, among other things, they paid a deposit – 100% for 1 month of rent in advance. In case you, say, burn down a stall.

And in total for 1 kiosk, prepare about 90,000 ₽.

But it’s not like renting out stalls to people like us is a very simple business. Somehow the owner of the stall did not come to an agreement with the owner of the land, and our kiosk was simply evacuated.

Then the driver called me at 7 am and said that he had brought bread, but there was no stall, I didn’t believe it, but he sent me a photo.

An average-good kiosk made about 10,000 rubles per day, which is about 300,000 rubles per month. Of this, you immediately need to pay 75,000 ₽ – the salary of sellers and rent.

In addition to kiosks, they opened points at markets, where rent cost 50,000 rubles.

Exhibitions – 3,000 ₽

They set up tables at events, organized tastings, and sometimes the administration gave free places to producers. And since it never happened at festivals that they just looked at the bread, and we were like:

Look at our bread. That's what he is!

Usually we tried everything and bought it. It turned out to sell for 5-6,000 rubles at 1 event.

Distributors – 580,000 ₽

Once upon a time we even had a dealer. The entrepreneur opened points under our sign, we helped with sellers, training, and he took the goods at purchase prices. True, then it abruptly closed and underpaid us.

In total, average business sales remained at 4 million rubles per month for quite a long time.

And the total revenue by period looked like this:

First six months: 200,000 – 400,000 ₽ per month

2016-2017 – about 1-2 million rubles per month

2018 – about 3.8 million rubles per month

2020 – about 5.5 million rubles per month

2024 – about 3.7 million m per month

Bread production costs

Production costs are based on a turnover of 4 million rubles per month, and are rounded for clarity.

Raw materials – 940,000 ₽

If you look at the cost of raw materials, baking bread is profitable.

At Borodino we get 233% from above.

On Darnitsky – 218% from above.

On the loaf – 221% on top.

On cookies – 194% on top.

In 2022, prices rose sharply, while we were figuring out how it happened so suddenly, we learned that cranberries were purchased in America and instead of 250 rubles, the berry began to cost 1,000 rubles, so they started using cherries in fruit bread.

It would seem that with a markup of more than 200% on bread and 194% on cookies, you can go wild and even vacation in the Maldives 2 times a year.

But in addition to raw materials, production has high fixed costs.

Rent – ​​100,000 ₽

We tried to rent a workshop on the outskirts – we couldn’t find people, so if you don’t want problems with staff, you’ll have to fork out for space in the center.

Employees – 430,000 ₽

The most important thing in baking is people.

You can come up with anything, but finding people who will do it with their hands, who will implement it, working hard every day, is the most difficult story

The work is difficult, once a woman at the point got drunk and fell asleep under the counter, customers who called us told us about this. If there were drinking bouts, we separated. Gradually, I learned to see this in interviews.

I didn’t see any theft, but there were stories where sellers used their own to cover shortfalls.

Returns – 10,000 ₽

If outlets or chains do not sell bread within 3 days, it is returned to us. We made a lot of crackers, mainly working with charitable organizations that fed this bread to those who needed it. There was a schedule of who was coming when.

With the homeless, things are not very simple. One bread delivery guy I know told me:

It happens that I take more, sometimes at the last points I give bread to the poor, but this is bad practice (I have already encountered this). Then they become more and more and more, and you still cannot refuse.

And in total, with a turnover of 2 million rubles, the bread baking shop spent about 2 million rubles.

How much does the owner of a bread production facility and a chain of bread stalls earn?

Total, with a turnover of 4 million rubles.

To bake bread, you need to spend 2 million rubles.

To sell bread that was baked – 1.2 million rubles

To pay taxes, commissions and maintain the office – 240,000 rubles.

That is, the profit in this situation is 560,000 rubles. There were 2 partners in the business, that is, in this situation, 280,000 rubles each.

But they didn’t take that much into their pockets, since they were always opening new points or buying more equipment/dishes. Therefore, there was an average of 150,000 rubles left for each person. Not bad for Voronezh.

We returned our initial investments in about 5 years, these were loans.

In the summer and autumn of 2024, the enterprise worked at zero or minus.

And then profitability became rent POVERTY, the owners' salaries were taken from revenues, and revenues sometimes did not allow this to be done at all.

Conclusions from 9 years of baking business

1. Entrepreneurship is freedom!

It's good to be an entrepreneur. If you wanted to work on weekends, you work; if you wanted to work at night, you work; you wanted to work on New Year’s Day, May Day, March 8th, well, you get the idea.

You wake up at 5 am and don’t know whether production will work well today or not

2. Business starts if you can afford managers

We couldn’t afford this, and therefore all the stressful and critical questions flocked to me. The salesperson fell ill, the electricity was cut off, the test supply drank, the cash register broke down, purchase prices went up, 1C died.

Only towards the end of the business did I hire an assistant, and she made my life a lot easier.

3. If we had made and sold twice as much bread with our current lineup, we wouldn’t have closed

The main problem is a sharp decline in demand and rising costs. When the income of the business began to provide a ration of water and bread, I closed.

4. The more expensive the equipment, the less work

Apparently, this is why large production always defeats small workshops. When most of the work is done by machines, the cost is much lower, and employees are found faster.

5. Artisan Bread Involves Trouble

I added baker's yeast, the dough rose, and the reproducibility of the result was excellent. But when working with sourdough, the process takes longer, and the result is more difficult to predict.

That is, it is important that such bread is made by a person with extensive experience. Experience in eating buns does not count as baking experience.

6. You don't like pigeons anymore

Pigeons love bread. They are in the shops, on the street, and the bread is literally covered with these creatures of God. We tried scarecrows, noise makers, puffers, but they still fly and eat everything they see.

As soon as you leave the uncovered bread at the machine and go for a new container, they immediately stick around it and peck at it with wild greed.

7. The state did not give business a nightmare

For 9 years I have had no problems with the tax office, Rospotrebnadzor, or the administration. On the contrary, My business helped, they paid for the billboard, offered subsidies for equipment at good rates, but then we no longer needed it. We invited people to entrepreneurial forums and organized meetings with networks.

8. No need to expect return on investment

Closing a business is always difficult. You try until the last minute, until the last moment you believe that everything is about to get better, here’s another advertising ploy, here’s another promising point, and while the business is in the minus, and you’re talking, your debts are growing.

So I accumulated debts worth the amount of all the equipment. That is, in fact, when I finally decided to close, I sold all my assets to a competitor, but a certain amount of debt still remained.

9. Don't bake bread

It’s much better to sit and write articles or shoot stories and reels.

When you're not baking bread, you're not dealing with chain lawyers, not treating women's alcoholism, not returning evacuated stalls, and even sleeping at night.

Maybe it's good that it ended, maybe there was no point in it, maybe if you bake bread, stop right now. And don’t worry, someone will bake you Bread (but this is not certain).

DISCLAIMER: The article is implicated by the blog author “Fell, got up” based on an interview with Victoria Nikitina, until recently co-owner of a bakery production in Voronezh.

For more than a year now, once a week I have been interviewing entrepreneurs about real business, and not this successful success of yours.

It may seem that “Fell, got up” – these are funny stories about how to fry seeds, dry leaves, glue cardboard to make millions on marketplaces. But in fact, the blog already contains more than 50 articles from different niches with detailed calculations by numbers.

– Entrepreneurs and managers try on the stories of heroes in order to find ways out of crisis situations;

– Employees want to know how much money they earned;

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