[Your show and format]: Main Street Margins, a weekly interview podcast for owners of small local businesses (cafes, shops, trades) about the money side of growing. One host (me, Sam), one guest, about 12 minutes, audio plus video on YouTube. Tone: friendly and practical; numbers are welcome. Each episode opens with a 30-second intro and ends with the guest's one piece of advice and where to find them. Clips go to Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and LinkedIn.
[Guest bio and material]: Guest: Dana Reyes, owner of Crumb & Copper Bakery.
Bio from her website: "Opened in 2016 as a two-person retail bakery. Today 14 staff, two retail counters and a wholesale arm supplying 38 cafes and 4 grocery stores."
From a local newspaper piece she sent us: wholesale revenue went from about $18,000 a month to about $37,000 a month in 18 months after three changes: a $150 minimum per delivery, dropping 9 of her 26 wholesale products, and moving cafes to weekly standing orders instead of daily phone calls.
She has told her origin story (leaving nursing to open the bakery) on two other podcasts.
Her pre-interview notes: "I'd love to talk about the mistake of saying yes to every cafe in year one, and how we nearly lost our biggest account when we brought in the minimum."
Links: crumbandcopper.example, Instagram @crumbandcopper
[Episode transcript]: [00:00] Sam: Welcome back to Main Street Margins. Today I'm talking with Dana Reyes, who owns Crumb & Copper Bakery. Dana, thanks for coming on.
[00:07] Dana: Thanks for having me, Sam. I've listened to a bunch of these, so it's fun to be on the other side.
[00:13] Sam: So most people know Crumb & Copper for the retail counters, but a big part of the business now is wholesale. How big?
[00:21] Dana: Wholesale is now a little over half our revenue. We supply 38 cafes and 4 grocery stores. Eighteen months ago wholesale was doing about eighteen thousand a month, and last month it was just under thirty-seven.
[00:36] Sam: So it roughly doubled. And you told me before we started that the first thing you did wasn't adding customers.
[00:43] Dana: No, the first thing was basically admitting we'd been doing it wrong for years. In year one of wholesale I said yes to every cafe that asked. Somebody wanted six croissants on a Tuesday, sure. Somebody wanted a dozen muffins delivered before seven a.m. across town, sure. I thought every account was growth.
[01:05] Sam: And it wasn't?
[01:06] Dana: It was revenue, it wasn't profit. Our average wholesale order back then was about eighty-five dollars. And when I finally sat down and worked out what a delivery actually cost us, driver time, van, fuel, the packaging, it came to about twenty-two dollars a stop. So on a small order we were giving away a quarter of it before we even baked anything.
[01:30] Sam: How did you not see that earlier?
[01:33] Dana: Honestly, because the money came in and the bank balance looked fine. And the driver was my brother-in-law for the first two years, so I wasn't paying a real wage for it in my head. When he left and I hired a driver at a proper rate, the numbers just fell apart. That was the wake-up call.
[01:52] Sam: So what changed first?
[01:54] Dana: Three things, and we did them over about four months. First, a minimum order of a hundred and fifty dollars per delivery. Second, we cut nine of our twenty-six wholesale products. Third, we moved everyone to standing orders. Instead of cafes calling us every morning, they set a weekly order and change it by Thursday noon if they need to.
[02:17] Sam: Let's take those one at a time. The minimum. That's scary for a small business. You're telling customers, spend more or go away.
[02:26] Dana: It was terrifying. I wrote the email to customers maybe ten times. And the scariest part was Harbor Bean. They're a six-location cafe group, they were our biggest account, and most of their locations ordered small, like sixty, seventy dollars each, every day.
[02:44] Sam: So the minimum hit them hardest.
[02:46] Dana: Exactly. Their operations manager called me the day the email went out and said, if this goes ahead we're switching to the bakery that does their pastries for the airport. I remember standing in the walk-in fridge because it was the only quiet place, thinking I've just lost twenty percent of wholesale.
[03:05] Sam: What did you do?
[03:07] Dana: I asked for a meeting instead of arguing on the phone. And I brought the numbers. I showed her that daily deliveries to six locations was thirty-six stops a week for us. I said, what if we deliver twice a week to your central kitchen, you distribute to the cafes, and the minimum applies per delivery, not per cafe. Their orders went from lots of tiny ones to two big ones.
[03:31] Sam: And she went for it?
[03:33] Dana: She went for it, partly because their central kitchen was already doing runs to the cafes. So it cost them almost nothing. We went from thirty-six stops a week to two for that account. And they're still our biggest customer.
[03:47] Sam: That's a great lesson. The minimum wasn't really the point, the stops were.
[03:51] Dana: That's exactly it. I wish I'd framed it that way in the email. The email said "new minimum order." If I'd said "we want to deliver less often and make it work for you," I think half the panic wouldn't have happened.
[04:05] Sam: Did you lose anyone?
[04:07] Dana: We lost seven small cafes in the first two months. Some of them I was honestly relieved about. A couple I was sad about, because I liked them. But here's the thing, two of those seven came back within the year, ordering above the minimum, once they'd tried the alternatives.
[04:26] Sam: Okay, the second change. Cutting nine products. How did you pick?
[04:31] Dana: I pulled every wholesale order from the previous six months into a spreadsheet. For each product I looked at how many we sold, what came back as waste, and how long it took to make. The lemon bars were a good example. Cafes liked having them in the case, but they sold slowly, so they ordered them in twos and threes, and we were making a full tray for that. A gluten-free brownie was the same story. High waste, tiny orders, special handling in the kitchen.
[05:00] Sam: Did customers push back?
[05:02] Dana: Less than I feared. A few asked for the lemon bars. But when we cut those nine, our bakers got back roughly a full day of production time a week. And that time went into the things cafes actually reorder, the croissants, the sourdough, the morning buns.
[05:20] Sam: The morning buns, I've heard about those.
[05:22] Dana: [laughs] They pay the rent. Seriously, the morning buns are about a fifth of wholesale now.
[05:28] Sam: And the third change, standing orders. Why did that matter so much?
[05:32] Dana: Because the phone was killing us. Every morning between six and eight, somebody was on the phone or reading texts, writing orders on a whiteboard. Mistakes happened all the time. A cafe would say "two dozen" and someone would write "two." With standing orders, each cafe has a weekly order in a shared sheet, they change it by Thursday noon, and on Thursday afternoon we plan the next week's production from it.
[05:58] Sam: So you can plan the whole week.
[06:00] Dana: We can plan flour, butter, staff hours, everything. Our waste went down a lot. I don't have an exact number for that, I should, but I know we're throwing away far less on Monday mornings.
[06:13] Sam: Let's talk money. You said wholesale roughly doubled. What happened to profit?
[06:19] Dana: This is the part I'm proudest of. Before the changes, when I worked it out properly, our wholesale margin was around twelve percent. Now it's around thirty. Our accountant would probably give you a slightly different number depending on how you split the shared costs, but it's a massive difference.
[06:38] Sam: Twelve to thirty. And revenue doubled at the same time.
[06:42] Dana: Right, because the accounts we have now order more each time. The average order is about two hundred and ten dollars now. And we deliver three days a week instead of six.
[06:53] Sam: Three days instead of six. What did that do for your team?
[06:57] Dana: Our driver works four days now instead of six, and we moved him to do the grocery store runs on the fourth day. And nobody in the kitchen has to start at three a.m. on a Sunday anymore. That one matters to me. People stay longer when the schedule is human.
[07:13] Sam: Let's talk about the grocery stores. Four stores. How did that start?
[07:18] Dana: That actually came from the cafes. One of the grocery buyers was a regular at a cafe we supply and asked who made the sourdough. We started with one store, sourdough and two cookie types only, and we said no to a lot of things they asked for at first. Like they wanted us to do sliced bread in plastic bags, and that's not what we're good at.
[07:42] Sam: Saying no again.
[07:43] Dana: Saying no again. I think that's the whole story, honestly. Year one I said yes to everything and it nearly broke us. Now we say no a lot and we're growing.
[07:53] Sam: For someone listening who runs a bakery or a coffee roaster or anything that does wholesale, and they're in that year-one mode, saying yes to everyone, where should they start?
[08:05] Dana: Work out what one delivery really costs you. Not a guess. Driver wage, van, fuel, packaging, the time someone spends on the order. Put a real number on a stop. Once you know that, the minimum basically sets itself, and you can explain it to customers without feeling guilty.
[08:24] Sam: How did you work yours out? Walk me through it.
[08:27] Dana: I took a month of delivery days. I added up the driver's wages for those days, the van lease, the fuel receipts and the boxes and bags. Then I divided by the number of stops that month. That's how I got about twenty-two dollars. It's not fancy. It took one evening with a spreadsheet and a glass of wine.
[08:47] Sam: [laughs] And the minimum, a hundred fifty. Why that number?
[08:51] Dana: I wanted the delivery to be under fifteen percent of the order. Twenty-two dollars on a hundred fifty is about fifteen. I rounded to make it simple. I'm sure there's a smarter way, but simple was what my customers needed.
[09:06] Sam: What would you do differently if you did it all again?
[09:09] Dana: I'd talk to the big accounts before sending the email. Harbor Bean should never have found out from a mass email. That was disrespectful, and I was lucky it worked out. Now when anything changes, the top five accounts get a phone call first.
[09:24] Sam: That's a good rule for anyone. Is there anything you tried that didn't work?
[09:29] Dana: Oh, plenty. We tried a delivery fee instead of a minimum, for about three weeks. Like twelve dollars a delivery under a certain size. People hated it. It felt like a penalty. The minimum felt like a policy. Same math, totally different feeling.
[09:45] Sam: Interesting. Same math, different feeling.
[09:48] Dana: Yeah, and I think a lot of small business owners get that wrong. It's not only what you charge, it's how it lands.
[09:55] Sam: What's next for Crumb & Copper?
[09:58] Dana: We're looking at a second production kitchen, because the current one is full by Thursday. But I'm being careful. I don't want to repeat year one, growing because I can, not because it makes sense. So I'm doing the delivery math for a second kitchen first.
[10:14] Sam: Before we wrap, your one piece of advice for owners listening.
[10:18] Dana: Know your cost per delivery, or whatever your version of that is, before you decide who to say yes to. The busiest year I ever had was the year I almost closed.
[10:29] Sam: That's a line. Where can people find you?
[10:32] Dana: The website is crumbandcopper dot example, and we're on Instagram at crumbandcopper. Come buy a morning bun.
[10:39] Sam: Dana, thank you so much.
[10:41] Dana: Thank you, Sam, this was fun.
[10:43] Sam: That's it for this week's Main Street Margins. If this helped, share it with one owner who's saying yes to everything. See you next week.
[10:52] End.
