What’s it like running an artisan bakery?

The challenges of running a small independent business

Creating delicious cakes in the heart of rural Dorset is the one of the more tangible things we do day to day here at Honeybuns Bakery. Behind the scenes Matt and I, as joint owners of the business, enjoy working with and learning from our close knit and dedicated team. When everyone is feeling positive and motivated, even the most challenging issues feel “do-able”. The aim is for us to produce cakes to the highest standards, delivered on time whilst enjoying our time at work. Here I share some of the ways we do this.

How best to motivate a team?

To use baking as an analogy – there are several key ingredients with communication being the eggs (free range, natch) binding the cake batter together.

As part of our working culture we hold quarterly reviews where Matt, myself and three senior members of the team report back on what we’ve achieved in our individual areas and as a business as a whole. Areas we shine a spotlight on include:

1. Sales
2. Eco progress
3. New products
4. Production efficiency/other issues

We also highlight one of our company values and use real life examples of where it has shone.

For example, taking ownership was demonstrated last year by someone noticing a missing ingredient in a big batch of flapjacks and halting production, and ensuring the mistake didn’t reach the customer.

These get togethers are the foundation of our team communication.

The Cornish pasties, cake and tea afterwards mean that we can mull things over and the team can ask questions without feeling under undue pressure.

Weekly newsflashes cover sales developments, social events, updates on our ever growing Honeybuns menagerie of animals plus tree planting and other “BeeGreen” news and keep us all in the loop. Again, weekly, key team members attend a production meeting where Matt gets to hear directly of any issues and figure out solutions.

Bee Social

Social events are another excuse for us to eat lovely food together and often result in interesting chats, ideas and solutions to problems – sometime even more so than from more structured meetings.

We have 6 annual social events which help punctuate the year and are something to look forward to.

Bright ideas

Honeybuns team members often tell us that being heard is motivating.

Our Bright Ideas scheme invites us all to put forward suggestions from installing barn owl boxes to tweaking a recipe – we’ve been able to improve the business holistically in this way and reward the Bright Ideas winner with a cash prize.

There are still communication black holes though.

Often I’ll be either out seeing customers, planting trees in our nature reserve or head down working on new ideas. It’s all too easy to become removed from what is affecting the team day to day. Waiting for a meeting is all well and good but I know I need to go and chat and listen to everyone on a regular basis – this is one of my resolutions for 2024.

Doing fewer things and doing them better

25 years ago when Honeybuns started it’s fair to say my approach to business was highly reactive and adrenaline fuelled. Decision making was done on the fly rather in a calm and considered way. Desperate to win and keep customers I would agree to requests such as “Can you do our order of lemon cake without the normal icing?” or “Can I have the rhubarb and ginger tray bake minus the ginger?”.

It was like walking into a florists and ordering one daisy – not cost effective or sustainable. The product range was therefore pruned right back and as my mum used to say, “we focused on the knitting”.

I think this art of keeping things simple has stood us in good stead.

Each January we sit down and analyse what our key aims are for the year, broken down into quarters.

Ideas are great but they need to pass the “do they fit with our focus?” test. If they threaten to dilute or divert then we park them.

Honeybuns New Year’s Business Resolutions

This January we have identified key aims:

• Improving our onsite experience for visitors – including a new tea tent.
• Extending and improving our incoming goods areas/storage facilities
• Ironing out little niggles with a couple of products
• Improving our ordering experience for online customers

All of these will be measured and progress presented to the team at our aforementioned quarterly reviews. To mix things up a bit for next year we will ask the team to come up with their suggested aims for 2025. Meaning we can arrive at a clear set of objectives collaboratively.

Living and breathing our company values

So often I think values are brainstormed, typed up prettily only to be popped back in the cupboard. Hence we select values throughout the year to highlight at the quarterly reviews, so we aim to do what we say on the tin.

A great example is our commitment to running a sustainable business. Visitors comment on how our passion for all things green is obvious as soon as they arrive. We’re great fans of reducing, reusing and recycling as illustrated by our sensitively maintained farm buildings and never ending tree and hedge planting! We package up our waste plastic, cardboard and glass for collection and even have our own skip for foil and metal. We have bee hives onsite and all of our “pretty planting” at Naish is pollinator friendly.

It’s my view that we should present an open book to visitors and customers and be happy to be judged by our actions. There is always room for improvement and we are all ears when we get to meet customers face to face. This is another valued source of feedback and learning.

We’d love to show you around in person. Our next pop up shop day is Saturday, 2^nd March. We can show you our ongoing restoration of an ancient drove way, our humane freedom beehive plus an inspiring shipping container conversion… Oh and most importantly you can meet the Honeybuns menagerie. Just bring carrots.

Do keep an eye on our socials too – as we are planning some brand new bakery tours.

Em x