My biggest mistake in my bakery.

12 55
Avatar for ramonoropeza
4 years ago

Those who know me here at Read.Cash know that at some point I started my own bakery from my home. Production was small: we produce between 400 and 500 loaves per week. However, this small production under good management led us to grow rapidly. Every time we had more clients and I received many congratulations from my neighbors for the good bread that has been lost in Venezuela due to the crisis.

I couldn't continue producing because the oven where I cooked the bread was borrowed. A friend of my partner had loaned them to us. She took them off and we stopped producing. But my biggest mistake has not been starting the business with a borrowed oven, no, that wasn't my worst mistake. The problem now is that I never clarified the business with my friend, we never put the terms of society on the table and now even our friendship is at risk.

At first it all started as a small friends business. However, as time went by as the business matured, the differences between us began to appear. The first difference is age: she is a 60 year old woman and I am a 26 year old young man. I really admire her spirit of not giving up in the face of adversity, her youngest daughter left the country and the eldest does not help her much. I needed an urgent money inflow. Instead, I want to start a company, create a business. This implies not making a profit during the first days. And a lot of sacrifice. She does not have the capacity for this.

The bakery demands a lot. Get up early and have plenty of energy to knead by hand. We do not have the ability to purchase a kitchen helper. We were only able to buy two extra trays (the others were on loan). At his age it is very admirable that he persists in making bread, however, it is not enough. The difference between her and me is abysmal in terms of product finish and time to make it. I am very patient with her and I understand her. But otherwise it would not be so, I am very demanding with myself and therefore with my collaborators.

The most important difference between her and me is the vision of the business. I want to grow it to very high levels. It is my dream and I am ambitious. She wants to live on it right now. And doing that here in Venezuela is complicated because small businesses do not survive hyperinflation, so it is logical to take the profits and continue investing to find a balance point where you can really take the profits.

I am determined to end society, until now only in word, but I am a loyal man and who can be trusted, I would not like to make her feel that I am betraying her or doing her any harm, but business is business. But I also have my ambitions and I do everything to go after them. Right now I find myself in a dilemma: I want to end the relationship without ending our friendship, I would not like her to feel bad about my decision, but I must also move on. Particularly, what prevents me from this is the terms of separation: we buy some things together, and I would like to buy your part to continue with the bakery once I have an oven and that she does not feel helpless. I also wouldn't want to make her feel like she wasted her time, but this is deeper. It is deeper because from the beginning it was my dream and she turned it into hers too. Now I think it could break your heart, because our business started as friends and not as partners.

To move forward, I am thinking of starting a fundraising campaign to start my bakery from my home. Already more mature and with clearer objectives. I will be developing the approach and I hope to receive your support as soon as I do. Thank you very much to all who have supported me from the beginning, I will not disappoint them.

Post-data: If you are going to do business with your friends, sit down and make everything very clear from the beginning !!

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$ 2.51
$ 1.01 from @TheRandomRewarder
$ 1.00 from @Cain
$ 0.50 from @tula_s
Sponsors of ramonoropeza
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Avatar for ramonoropeza
4 years ago

Comments

Whenever there is money involved, everything must be clarified, and if it is written better, I hope that your friendship does not end, let him know that you did not use it to pursue your dreams of creating a bakery, good luck ...

$ 0.00
4 years ago

Thanks for your words. I hope everything goes well, very good advice but this must be through deeds and not words. So I would like to buy you all of your share.

$ 0.00
4 years ago

did you consider issuing shares as SLP tokens to the investors?

$ 0.00
4 years ago

Absolutely. MigasCoin or MigasToken. So I have baptized it. It is initially a token for customers and they can exchange for bakery products. For each purchase they are given an equivalent value until they gather enough to exchange products. https://read.cash/@ramonoropeza/migascoin-migas-slp-token-for-panxcafe-preview-114ab0ca

$ 0.00
4 years ago

i meant more like traditional company shares (with potential dividends etc) than loyalty points

$ 0.00
4 years ago

Okay, I've considered that possibility. You have to understand that it is not a big business, it is just to start making bread from my home and sell to my neighbors. However, as it is a profitable business, it may guarantee small dividends to people who collaborate with the objective. But I don't have the knowledge to do it beyond creating and distributing SLP tokens, it would be worth giving value to said tokens. It's a big challenge.

$ 0.10
4 years ago
  1. basically, you can make a business plan, and then post it on flipstarter.

  2. Because flipstarter can not distribute tokens as rewards to the investors yet, you would need to distribute the share tokens separately after a successful funding campaign completes. The PSF project does something like this for example, so you can look into how to do it there.

  3. And if you eventually become profitable, you can use the dividend calculator tool, to pay back the investors.

$ 0.01
4 years ago

It is an excellent idea. If I have had something like this in mind, but my biggest obstacle to this would be to build trust in collaborators. And I was not very clear how to deliver the tokens either but you have given me an answer to it. Thank you very much, I hope I can carry it out.

$ 0.00
4 years ago

May I ask how long you have been working together? Not that it matters. It's your life man. Live it how you want. As long as you aren't hurting anyone else, follow your heart.

$ 0.00
4 years ago

Thanks Cain, we have a few months working together. If I'm concerned that she somehow feels betrayed. I hope it does not happen this way and we reach a good agreement. We don't have many things, but we do share many moments together.

$ 0.00
4 years ago

60 years is not old and what I don't understand is why both of your wishes can't be granted. One doesn't bite the other. One oven is a problem and you need to sell more than bread only and need to learn some new techniques. You can bake bread without kneading the dough by stirring the ingredients. Lucky you you live in a country with a great temp.

A figure out of a solar oven can be of any help. It might add something extra to your bakery.

Keep in mind that if you are without an oven, gas,/electricity or get ill you can forget about your business.

Can you describe to me how you work, prepare the dough, use the oven, etc. If working from home is allowed in your country I would grab that opportunity.

$ 0.00
4 years ago

It is a long story. She is an architect by profession and works all her life on construction sites. Already in her last days of her career she was working with a government ministry. This paid her very badly and she decided to stop working there, her only income is the social security pension and this here is absolutely nothing. $ 1 or $ 2 a month. So one day she found me making bread and first she wanted me to teach her and then she told me about her friend and the oven. And so we started the business. She is not used to making bread.

The whole process is manual: knead by hand, form by hand and the oven was borrowed (I no longer have it). The oven in my house is not optimal for this job. However, this little experience has helped me make some projections about the business. YES, I can work from home and deliver the bread here in my own neighborhood.

$ 0.10
4 years ago