lessons from my first food pop-up
the microbakery beginnings
It’s been a month and a half since I spent five days straight baking for my first food pop-up. I had the best time, even though I had been preparing for months and working 15-hour days to get everything done. This weekend, I baked for my second event and I feel like I’m really getting into the swing of things. Having let the dust settle on my first foray into corita and awaiting the film scans accompanying this newsletter, I’m ready to chat through just how my first pop-up went!
the preparation
I applied to be a part of a three-day market with an expected footfall of up to five thousand people for my first event – I thought it was highly unlikely I would be accepted as I had nothing to show for my business other than a few ideas and a photo of a jar of jam. But to my surprise, I got a spot and began the daunting process of preparing with no idea what sort of number of items to bake for this sort of thing. I decided that I would have to bake at the capacity of my oven and my time (as most items would be baked fresh each morning), and if I could sell out and make a small profit after the cost of ingredients, then it would be worth doing.
The scale felt big, but to be honest after developing this project for months I was ready for a big challenge. It made me realise how rare opportunities are at work to get out of your comfort zone and prove you can do something! It’s genuinely really energising, and I feel like one of the hardest things about starting your own business or project is other people telling you to chill out and go slow. But I keep learning that if I think I can probably achieve something were I given the chance, then I should just give myself the chance! I’m not going to grow if I keep attempting things that feel too easy. Anyway, I was very excited to have a go at setting up shop at home and pretending to work in a bakery for a few days.
I set out to make approx 250 baked goods and then a good selection of jams, granola and some other bits.
the preparations included:
Registering as a business, purchasing insurance
Branding the project, including product stickers, menus, launch graphics, printed flyers and labels for the table
Developing and scaling up recipes for the menu
Calculating the cost price and profit margin on each product
Purchasing equipment including display trays, tongs, baking trays and cookie rings
Ordering ingredients and jars
Making a lot of jam, compote and peanut butter
the menu
The menu is the fun part! I wanted to start with a handful of base recipes that I felt confident with, and develop the flavours in a few directions. I love cinnamon buns/swirls and the recipe I use for the enriched dough, so I tested a normal cinnamon swirl and then a babka-inspired version which was filled with dark chocolate, sugar and ground cardamom.
From my base brown butter cookie recipe I made brown butter milk chocolate and miso white chocolate cookies, and developed a double dark chocolate cookie using coconut oil, coconut milk and flaxseed. I also tried my hand at some salted lemon shortbread. The little almond and little lemon buns are financiers, a cake made with ground almond, which are personally my favourite type of sweet treat (not including pastries). The almond cakes were topped midway through with something in the realm of an almond croissant topping, and the lemon bun with homemade lemon curd and a swirl of mascarpone cream.
For the pantry section, I probably went a bit too hard but as this was a food and homeware market, I thought this is what people would be expecting! I made a big batch of blackberry and bay jam with frozen organic british blackberries that I’d had joy with in the past. Forced rhubarb season was in full swing, so I got my hands on some Tomlinsons rhubarb and made 16 jars of bright pink compote. I sent the food processor overheating making batches of peanut butter (just roasted blanched peanuts and salt) and I made some glass bottles of fresh Sicilian-style lemonade which were very satisfying to look at with their lovely blue labels. Then finally, I made trays and trays of almond and pecan granola with sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, oats, cinnamon and honey.
I had the idea of selling one of each cookie + a zine for a discount, and I commissioned my partner to make an A5 lino print in blue to go alongside everything.
how it went
I returned from a trip to Cornwall early to start to get everything ready on the Wednesday night, when I started making big batches of jam and going over my lists. Then on Thursday it was all go for anything that could be prepped ahead – I made tubs full of cookie dough, financier batter, more jam and trays of granola. I think I made it to bed just after midnight, but not before a late-night walk to the shop for some missing eggs (there is always something).
The market started at 5pm on Friday for a launch evening, so I got up about 6am and started making dough for the cinnamon and babka swirls. I think the Friday evening was the hardest one to call, so I baked 12 of each cookie and similar numbers of everything else as I was unsure how busy it would be. I arrived to set up about 1pm, enjoyed a coffee on the sofa in the adjoining cafe and felt like I could flop. I spent an hour or so in the hall setting up – I had ended up in prime position in the room, right by the front door. It was also really really warm so I calmly unpacked all my tubs of cake and laid everything out nicely on the aluminium trays with their labels. I was pretty happy with how the full table was looking considering lots of the other stallholders had impressive set ups and seemed like very seasoned marketgoers.
At 5pm, the doors opened and loads of people flooded in (there were free drinks vouchers and a restaurant pop-up in the cafe). I was so surprised that within seconds someone was already buying a cookie. Friday night was a bit of a whirlwind, it was way busier than I expected and I actually sold out of baked goods in the first hour. Some people were disappointed as they wanted cookies but there were also girls who passed by congratulating me on selling out which I found so cute!
I got home late, after hanging out with friends and eating a delicious schnitzel with beetroot and aioli from the Little Brickhouse pop-up. On Saturday I awoke at 4am as the market started at 10am. Once again, I made cinnamon swirl dough and after the success of the previous evening I baked all of my cookie dough with plans to make more when I returned ready for Sunday. Saturday was fun, there were lots of people around from different circles and it was so nice to chat to people involved in hospitality, the arts and other small businesses. I do feel as though I forgot to prepare myself for the long days on the market though – all of my focus was on baking and prepping and then when I was suddenly sat smiling at people for 7 hours I felt very sleepy and unprepared. Luckily there was often someone to get me water, coffee or a sandwich – but I didn’t really like leaving my stall as I was so invested in it that when I tried to take a fifteen-minute breather I just wanted to be back inside!
Luckily, Sunday started at 11am so I woke up at 5am for the final day. It was two hours shorter and I hadn’t really factored that it when I’d scaled up, so for the final hour I did a buy-one-get-one-free on baked goods to get them all sold out. Then I went for a pizza with my family and went to bed!
here’s the stats on the final sales
52 miso chocolate cookies
50 brown butter cookies
30 babka swirls
29 double choc cookies
27 cinnamon swirls
17 little lemon buns
10 little almond buns
10 lemon shortbread (I didn’t make any of these on Saturday)
10 granola
10 lemonade
9 forced rhubarb compote
6 lino prints
6 recipe zines
5 peanut butter
5 blackberry jam
My key finding from the event was that people LOVE cookies. I don’t know if it’s to do with how easy they are to eat on the go, but people were so into the miso white chocolate cookies. I made a bit too much pantry stuff as I sold less than half, but I was really proud of how they turned out. I also managed to sell another £100 worth of pantry items via instagram in the days following, so that helped.
The financiers/little buns were perhaps overpriced as they were quite small, but almonds are expensive. I think these could do better in more of a coffee shop context, where people can sit and have a drink alongside my bakes.
People also really liked the branding and it seemed to add a lot to people’s perception of the stall that everything looked nice. I must say I had a lot of fun with all of the details like stickers and menus, and seeing it all come together was one of my favourite parts!
key learnings
This is really quite a long newsletter but I’ll finish off with five key learnings from doing this event. If you are at all interested in a run down of future events/menus then let me know as they’re fun to write and very helpful for reflection!
1. don’t trust your future self to remember things
I would say this is the most important learning of them all. When you are developing recipes, constantly testing and then scaling things up – do not trust your future self to remember that the extra 20g of flour or hour in the fridge worked well. Write everything down! Developing systems for working sometimes feels a bit backwards with something like baking, but I can tell you that on the day when I required information that I hadn’t written down – I froze. You don’t want to make the same mistake twice. Make lists (way in advance) of what you need to bring, ingredients lists, measurements, etc. It’s will be a lot of numbers on a spreadsheet, but check and then check again before you place an order, start pouring out ingredients or printing labels.
2. you will forget to take good photos
You would think that having 7-hour long days sat at a stall you would take good photos of everything you’ve made, but you won’t. I was very lucky that my partner took these photos on his film camera, but everything on my phone looks pretty rubbish. The lighting was terrible, the background of the stalls behind me was messy and I was constantly in a rush. This is totally cool, but sometimes having one image of each product you make is invaluable for securing future work or events! Prepare a way to capture some nice images beforehand and you will care less about snapping pictures on your phone all day.
3. good equipment is priceless
It’s true that if you buy cheap, you buy twice! New equipment felt expensive to buy for a single event but it has already saved me so much time and ensured consistent bakes even in my little oven. Silicone bun trays, exoglass cookie rings and aluminium baking trays for display seemed expensive at first, but meant I could bake far more efficiently and I use them all the time. It’s very different making a batch of 12 cookies and making a batch of 50 – and you will earn the money you spent back pretty quickly and won’t have to spend it again.
4. connections > transactions
The best thing about the whole market was meeting people – I was so surprised by how many connections I made that felt genuinely valuable. The event I worked last weekend was organised by someone I met at this market, and I have already met people at other events who told me they have eaten my miso cookies!
5. doing something yourself is so energising
Making new connections felt so special because this was something I had worked so hard on. I don’t know if it’s just my personality, but it made me realise how draining it is to give creative energy to something that you have no stakes in. Being creative and responsible for the risk has such an amazing pay-off. I absolutely loved spending long days blasting music in the kitchen and rolling out dough, and when people came over to tell me that something I had baked was amazing I felt genuinely overjoyed.
Plus, you can involve your friends and family by having them muck in, give lifts and eat leftovers. Most people are also energised by something new and exciting and it’s fun to celebrate with them in your successes, too!
Until next time 💌
Such a wonderful read. Loved "coming" with you on this journey. So interesting to learn about everything that is involved behind running a food pop-up ✨
Love the way this is written, it felt like I was right there experiencing it with you. Can I also ask what camera your partner has? These photos are gorgeous!