Proofed: A Baker's Journey, Episode 2
Seventeen years ago, Michelle Chesser lived in a two-bedroom trailer in Southeast Missouri with her husband and four kids. Two boys in one bed, two girls in the other. The plan was to stay two years while they built a house on the property. Then the economy crashed, and two years became ten.
She wanted a little income for the family and a way to teach her kids to work, so they gardened and sold vegetables. Then she signed up for the local farmers market and brought cupcakes. Box mix, buttercream, styrofoam takeout containers. It was the cupcake craze of the early 2000s and they sold.
"We made $75," she told me. "And I thought I was rich."
That is where Home Sweet Home Baker started. Three feet of counter space, no packaging, and a woman who would not let customers pick up at her house because she did not want them to see the trailer.
This week on Proofed, Michelle and I talked for an hour about what happened next. She is one of the most honest voices in the home baking world, and she said things in this conversation that I think every baker needs to hear.
Listen now: Spotify · Apple Podcasts · proofedpodcast.com
The cinnamon rolls that changed everything
The cupcakes only worked in spring, before the heat. Then one week Michelle brought cinnamon rolls to market and they sold out. Within a few seasons the vegetables were gone and the baked goods were paying for groceries.
"We did not have a lot of money," she said. "And when I say we didn't have a lot of money, I don't mean we couldn't afford Netflix. We couldn't pay our bills."
One good event bought the kids coveralls for winter. A $200 market day meant pizza from Casey's, which in the Midwest is a treat, not a habit. She talks about that pizza money a lot on Instagram, and I asked her why. Her answer is one of my favorite moments in the episode: $200 a week for a stay-at-home homeschooling mom is not nothing. It is a pair of shoes, a movie, a vacation fund. Bakers who feel like they are not doing enough are usually measuring against the wrong thing.
The house the bakery helped build
Michelle's husband learned to build houses working for his uncle. When the bakery money grew and he got a raise, they took a construction loan and built a home on the property over a year. Her kids were 13, 14, and 15 by then and did everything he could do. Her daughters hung drywall while he was at work.
Between the house and the garage there was supposed to be a screened porch. Her husband thought that was a waste of a big room and framed it in instead. A year later a businessman in town asked her to bake for a coffee shop he wanted to open. He asked for a year before she said yes. That room became her commercial kitchen. Total cost: about $2,000. Laminate floor, the oven from the trailer, a three-basin sink, used cabinets, paneling. Outside city limits, inspected by the county, no hood required.
She calls it her magic door. She cannot sell a cream cheese frosting made in her home kitchen, but she can if she makes it ten feet away on the other side of that door.
She baked wholesale for that coffee shop for eight years. 150 pans of cinnamon rolls a week in one oven.
When the business eats you
This is the part of the episode I wish I had heard five years ago.
Michelle had built something that worked, and she could not see that it was consuming her. Her mom would drive up from Jackson, Tennessee for the day and Michelle could not stop to have lunch with her. "Come out in the bakery and talk to me while I work." Then one weekend her husband went to the woods, and she was relieved, because now she could get the Christmas cookies done. Later he told her he had not gone to hunt. He had gone to get away from the bakery, because it was everywhere.
"That was like being punched in the stomach," she said. "That's when I finally realized what had happened."
She prayed for a year about how to get out. Then the coffee shop owner asked her, unprompted, whether the account was even profitable for her and whether she wanted out. Six months later she was down to cinnamon rolls and pumpkin rolls with her daughter's help, and eventually she was out completely.
"Almost every baker goes through it," she said. "You can't even coach people not to. They don't know it's happening until it's too late."
I have been there. I closed my first business because of it. If you are in it right now, listen to this section twice.
The index card on the bathroom mirror
We talked about faith and contentment, because Michelle does, openly. In the trailer years she was not content. The floor in the kids' room rotted through and the carpet was the only thing holding it up. She could not see a way out that did not involve a rich uncle she did not have.
She wrote a verse on an index card and put it on her bathroom mirror. I have learned to be content in all things. She says she learned to be content in that trailer, even joyful, and that it was not long after that the bakery and her husband's raise together made a way out.
Her point is not that contentment is a trick that makes money show up. It is that she stopped putting her trust in the bank account, the house, or the business, because any of it can be gone tomorrow. That is a hard thing to say out loud as an entrepreneur. She says it anyway.
Charge more, bake less
Michelle will tell you pricing is not her strength. The best pricing advice she ever got came from her husband, who is not a business person at all. One stressful Thanksgiving he said: you are not charging enough. You are selling out, people are pre-ordering like crazy, charge more. You will get fewer orders and work less for more money.
She priced her pies at $25, unheard of ten years ago, sold every one she decided to make, and made more money on fewer pies.
Which brings us to the line.
You are not Walmart
At markets, someone will always ask why your cookies are $2 each when they can get a dozen for $2 at the store. Michelle's answer, which she gives to every baker she coaches:
"You are not Walmart. You are not a factory. You're making things by hand in one oven, and you actually have to sleep. You have a family. The robots at Walmart don't. You put the stickers on your stuff, not a machine. So don't price your stuff like Walmart. Don't look at your stuff like it's from Walmart. Don't market it like Walmart. It is way above."
People pay for what they value. She will happily pay $8 for a Starbucks latte on the way through Jackson and will never in her life pay for a manicure. Plenty of people value handmade baked goods. Price for those people.
What she would tell herself 17 years ago
Set boundaries. Say no. Not everyone is going to love you. Put your family before the business, one hundred percent. Take days off.
"I honestly did not say no for the first five years," she said. She once spent four days on strawberry shortcake cookies for a two-year-old's party while her own family got nothing. She is over it now. There is another baker who wants that order and has the capacity for it. You do not have to say yes to make money. Most of the time you will make more, and have more peace, by saying no.
And your bakery does not have to look the same every year. Michelle is close to an empty nester now and has started taking one decorated cookie order a week because she loves them again. Next year might be different. That is the whole point of a home bakery. It changes with your life.
The Baker's Library
Michelle now coaches home bakers through a membership called the Baker's Library at homesweethomebaker.com. Two live sessions a month, guest speakers, hot-seat social media audits, seasonal planning, and a growing library of recorded sessions and guides. One member calls it bakers helping bakers. Michelle's own description: newsflash, I don't know everything, so let me bring in people who do.
Rapid fire
What is playing in her kitchen: 90s country. Last thing she ate that she did not bake: a friend's sourdough, which she would gladly pay $10 for. Chocolate chip over oatmeal raisin. Chewy over crunchy. Cake over pie. And a cinnamon roll with caramel icing, not vanilla.
Listen to the episode
Proofed: A Baker's Journey, Episode 2, Michelle Chesser: You Are Not Walmart.
Listen on Spotify · Listen on Apple Podcasts · proofedpodcast.com
Find Michelle: Instagram and Facebook at Home Sweet Home Baker. The Baker's Library at homesweethomebaker.com.
Find Proofed: proofedpodcast.com and @proofedpodcast on Instagram.
Proofed: A Baker's Journey is hosted by Raina Shults, founder of Sprinkle Me Sugar and Marraine, the marketplace for home bakers.