Bottom Dollar, which built a new building a few years ago, had been in the 6,000-person community for decades. After it closed, there weren’t other grocery options. So, 5 Generation Bakers added a small retail grocery store to the plant.
“We felt compelled to add that store on the front,” Baker says. “I don’t expect that we’re going to be very profitable there. As long as we’re not really losing money and providing an asset to the community, then we’re happy to operate it.”
While Baker is excited about what’s in store for the company — and happy he undertook the expansion — it has brought some sleepless nights. He’s gone from running a profitable facility to a mortgage 10 times larger than his prior rent.
“It’s like, OK, now I need to go out and build sales,” he says. “I’m pretty confident in my forecast and the way I understand the numbers of the business that once we hit a certain level of revenue we will break even. So I’m confident in that, but we’re not there from a sales standpoint, yet.”
Over the past year, Baker, who is the president, CEO, CFO and national sales director all in one, has focused on planning and construction.
“The majority of our sales effort has been in maintaining our current customers,” he says. “So now I really need to bust my butt and get out there and start building those sales.”
Measure twice, cut once
Baker hadn’t thought much about the difficulty of a renovation, but he had a good team around him made up of both external advisers and internal team members.
He committed to making sure everything moved forward according to plan. He and his quality assurance officer spent several hours every day at the construction site, ensuring questions were answered as soon as they came up. His team back at the old facility also stepped up to ensure everything ran smoothly.
“From an operational standpoint, the people that I assembled to work for us and help 5 Generation Bakers to achieve our vision was probably the No. 1 thing that I did in order to get this project completed,” Baker says.
5 Generation Bakers also did a lot of pre-planning. Early on, the company hired an engineering firm that specialized in bakery and snack food expansion to gain understanding. The construction itself, which took about six months, went by quickly.
“We strategized, and strategized, and strategized to make sure that we were making the right decisions,” Baker says. “We talked about things endlessly.”
You don’t want to make quick decisions on something so critical.
“A businessman’s natural attribute is to take a risk, but just be careful you’re not taking an uncalculated risk,” he says. “You want to make sure that you spend that time and understand the full impact of what a large decision like this will have.”
