News | Your Business
Up and running By Natasha Parrant
Starting a business can be exciting, but it can also be hard.
Bohemian Bakery was established in 2016 intending to be a village bakery and have a wide assortment of goods. You name it, they bake it; pastries, bread rolls, donuts, pies, and cakes – all made on the premises.
There are a lot of things to consider to get the ball rolling.
The delicious bakery is both vegetarian and vegan-friendly with its very own selection of pastries.
Even simple things like the company’s name, location, and aesthetic can take time to figure out. A well-known business that worked their way up to get to where they are now is Fix & Fogg founders Roman and Andrea Jewell. The couple decided to leave their lawyer degrees and take that extra step further in the food industry. In 2014, the couple established Fix & Fogg by making sustainable, delicious, yet healthy nut butter and are now known as the world’s best nut butters. The business has won numerous awards globally and started as a small window store hidden away in Wellington – to stocking produce throughout New Zealand, Australia, the US, China, Singapore, the Philippines, Samoa, and Tahiti – (even the US has a window store). Fix & Fogg offers various handmade flavours such as peanut butter, chocolate hazelnut butter, chocolate berry, and peanut butter with; fruit toast, coffee and maple, dark chocolate, and the list goes on. Roman’s advice for business owners starting up their own business is essentially five things he wishes someone told him when he first started: “The more you give the more you get back. It makes you feel good and it always comes back around. Donating to charities, surprising customers, and being generous is what makes us tick at Fix & Fogg, and I firmly believe it has contributed a lot to our success.” According to businessman Gary Hirshberg, the key to being a successful entrepreneur is persistence, persistence, persistence. I couldn’t agree more. It made me comfortable with the fact that running a business is hard at any stage of the journey People are your greatest asset, but give them space to grow. They’ll almost always outshine you if you do. “The founder journey is more important than the business journey. I’ve seen too many founders suffer from burnout, mental health issues, or breakdowns in their personal relationships,” Gary says. “Look after yourself and your loved ones. It’s a lonely and hard path to running a business, so look after yourself. You deserve it. "Breadth is the enemy of focus. Adopt an ‘inch wide, mile deep approach’ to your key markets instead of spreading yourself too thin.”
The bakery did so well it’s currently based in three locations; Sumner, City Bakery café, and St Martins.
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The more you give the more you get back. It makes you feel good and it always comes back around. Donating to charities, surprising customers, and being generous is what makes us tick at Fix & Fogg, and I firmly believe it has contributed a lot to our success.
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Bohemian Bakery owner and founder Maka Angyalova is known for her traditional Slovakian and Czech recipes. The bakery was first established in Sumner and the plan was for Maka to bake everything herself, but as the bakery got more popular, she has about 20 employees helping her run her business. Maka advises new entrepreneurs to think about the figures when starting a business. “Say I was earning $200 a day for making bread… that would be 40 bread a day just to keep your current income.” She advises people to ask themselves, is that going to be sustainable? There’s a lot to think about such as the investment, equipment, team, costs, and which premises. “If you sum it up and it doesn’t add up, then you potentially need to think of doing something else.” When starting a business, it’s important to be entirely committed. Maka says you need to reassess your commitments, as this is something you – alone – need to invest lots of time in to think about the logistics of running a business.
Fix and Fogg CEO and co-founder Roman Jewell.
Also, think about what you can do yourself. “If it might not be feasible for one person then you need to calculate the cost of employing someone and so on.” In the hospitality industry, working with others is a key thing, but if you’re on your own there are limitations as to what you can do, she says. Think about the distribution. “If you want to sell products to supermarkets, they usually mark out about 20 percent of the wholesale price. That’s a huge cut, however, it’s a much greater reach for you. Then it means can you make as much as your customer might demand.” All business entrepreneurs should start small and ask for help.
Go to your local markets, schools, and centres so they can help get your products out there. Another popular place a lot of foodies will know Starting small can also be better for your is Bohemian Bakery in Christchurch. mental health, she advises. CT 8 | www.canterburytoday.co.nz
Maka Angyalova making lemon tarts at Bohemian Bakery.
