Find Work That Fulfills You with Jenny Berg

Jenny Berg lives in Bend, OR and sells sourdough bread with her cottage food business, Crumb Sourdough Microbakery. Jenny first started baking sourdough bread in 2020, shortly after the pandemic began. And so did many others. With people stuck at home, baking sourdough became an extremely popular hobby. But not many bakers turned their newfound hobby into such a successful business. When Jenny started selling her bread in 2021, her business took off and she hasn’t looked back since. She quickly started selling out every single week and eventually had to quit her day job and invest in commercial equipment to ramp up her production. Jenny now has over 7,000 Instagram followers, and she gets about 1,000 new followers per month! But she explains why the numbers don’t tell the full story. In this episode, Jenny shares what she’s learned about baking and selling sourdough, how she grew her social accounts twice, how she’s working to improve Oregon’s restrictive cottage food law, and how her cottage food business has finally given her a sense of fulfillment in her work. What You’ll Learn The importance of networking with other entrepreneursThe equipment you need to make sourdough breadWhy Jenny decided to create a strong brand before starting her businessWhy you should get involved in changing your local cottage food lawA creative method for reducing ingredient costsWhy you should be collecting customers’ email addressesHow to grow your Instagram account to thousands of followersThe process of making sourdough breadThe difference between homemade and commercial sourdough breadWhy you should be transparent with your mistakes and failures Resources Crumb Sourdough Microbakery website (Instagram | Facebook | News story) Sourdough Bread Ovens: Rofco B40Simply Bread Recommended Books: Flour Water Salt Yeast , by Ken ForkishTartine Bread, by Chad Robertson Prominent Sourdough Bakers: Maurizio Leo (The Perfect Loaf)Elaine BoddyEmilie Raffa (The Clever Carrot)Pantry MamaHumble Bakehouse (now closed)Lily’s LoafCarly Cross (Carly’s Flour Shop)The Invy Baker Central Milling (sourcing flour) Fiverr (logo & branding design) Institute for Justice (help with amending a cottage food law) Oregon Cottage Food Law Free Tutorial: How To Build a Great Website In 1 Hour A lot of entrepreneurs still think they need to spend money to get a good website, and that is simply not true anymore. I created this free tutorial that will walk you through how to set up a totally free website on Square Online in less than an hour! <br />Get full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/74