Plan the Type of Business
This is a really important tip and should be taken care of in your business plan. However, it will be mentioned here to provide a guide. The first thing is to determine the legal structure of your business. Do you want it to be a sole business or are you planning to incorporate (that is, to become an LLC). Also, you need to determine if you would like to go into partnership with someone else or if this is strictly a solo operation. Knowing these will help you decide whether you want to run your pastry shop from home, or from a store location.
Determine the Type of Pastry
You could either be a pastry shop that makes every kind of pastry known to mankind (and that is not likely) or you could decide to be known for certain kinds of pastry. Pastry comes in so many different forms, from short crust pastry to rough puff pastry and even pate a choux, just to mention a few. You can decide to make a few of each or just pick a category or two of pastry and focus on that. It is recommended that you specialize and be known for a handful of really spectacular pastry.
Where is the Pastry Coming From?
This is vital and should be decided upon even before you start your pastry shop for obvious reasons. In planning how to start your pastry shop, you also need to plan for where your pastry would come from. You could probably get a couple of really good pastry chefs to make and deliver the pastry for your pastry shop and if you decide upon that, you would need to carry out a thorough research to be sure that your standards are met. However, and this is the best option, you should consider making the pastry yourself. You could always go for refresher courses in pastry making to learn other more intricate pastry making skills. That way, even if you do eventually hire one or two chefs, you are always assured of the quality of your pastries.
Incorporate Freebies
Once you are up and running, you would need to plan to incorporate freebies for your customers. This is really important especially if you have a lot of competition where you are. But even beyond the competition, there has to be a reason to get people into your store, once they taste your wonderfully delicious pastry, they’ll be back. But they have to taste if first and that is what the freebies are for. Plan to offer either a special selection of freebies each day, limited to a certain amount of course, or plan a particular day when you will line up some freebies for customers.
Knowing how to start a pastry shop requires a lot of research and feasibility studies, plus it helps if you are passionate about pastry. These tips will not take the place of a well researched business plan but they will help you in getting your thoughts together.
