The drive: What challenges have you overcome?
The original goal was to have the product in the refrigerator (rather than the freezer) for the ultimate convenience. With our baking mix being complete with eggs, butter, milk and perishable fruit and veg, having a chilled product was tricky because the fridge only keeps the batter good for a few days without adding preservatives. It can be extended out to about two weeks with preservatives. There is also a fair amount of work and cost involved with lab testing, etc., to ensure a stable and suitable product for being chilled, and we plan on working on this in the near future.
In the meantime, one of the easiest ways to ensure safety compliance was having the product frozen. The frozen option gives a much longer shelf / freezer life (currently 9 months), allowing us more flexibility as a start-up business. Another benefit of it being frozen was that we can utilise in-season New Zealand produce for production rather than importing fruit and veg that might be needed for the product flavour but may be out of season.
The other main challenge in getting the product ready for market were the general start-up costs, and in particular, going through the onerous and costly compliance processes, which are quite difficult to navigate as a sole-trader.
For better or worse: What are the pros and cons of running your own business?
As mentioned earlier, a big challenge with running your own business is to juggle it with parenting as you often are relatively time poor – that is just the nature of parenting and having little people who are reliant on you.
But there have been other challenges, like ensuring the product is produced safely as there are rigorous standards that have to be met with food compliance – especially when you are aiming to feed children healthy food.
Finding the balance between growth and supply can be challenging too – marketing the product and achieving sales growth while maintaining a solid source of supply so that you can grow steadily without huge financial backing.
And with trying anything new, and especially in business, there are a lot of curve balls that you didn’t expect.
The pro, as I also have mentioned, is having the creative outlet and a goal towards growing a business that will hopefully benefit other parents and continue to transform and raise awareness around how we nourish children during their critical developmental years.
Hopes and dreams: What next?
At this stage, the Homemade Baker business is still a hobby or side project, which does tie into a big aspect of parenting: feeding our children. And so I find that whilst I support my parenting journey, it is fun to have a creative outlet and a goal towards building something.
We have a lot of ideas of how to grow the product range and increase our product offering and I hope we can bring those ideas to fruition.
Homemade Baker‘s products are all about the customer experience of turning anyone into a competent home baker. We aim to make homemade baking convenient for people with busy lifestyles and so we produce a baking mix that is actually convenient – ready to bake with nothing to add. We know that customers have access to pre-baked foods from the bakery section of a supermarket, but Homemade Baker provides an option to have fresh baking right out of the oven at home, with minimal effort.
We hope that people can see the value in the product because it is shockingly convenient and it just helps broaden the range of convenient “healthier” food options for our children.
Visit homemadebaker.co.nz to find out more and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.
