Health |

Column: South Holland bakery shifts to grocery marketing plan during pandemic

During the past three-and-a-half years, I’ve profiled several south suburban small-business owners in this column. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to surge, claim more lives and inflict economic damage, here is a look at the impact on one of those businesses.

When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, bakery cafe owner Marcus J. Freeman was forced to react quickly. While other businesses closed in March prompted by stay-at-home orders, Freeman temporarily shut his family owned Signature Sweets Factory by Marcus J weeks earlier.

“We closed in mid-February right when the virus was starting to get bad,” Freeman said. “My mother and family have preexisting conditions. For three to four weeks we were completely closed.”

Freeman, whose business opened in a South Holland storefront 3 1/2 years ago, said he worried about the toll the pandemic would take on the bakery cafe, which he runs with his mom.

“Most of our customers come to us for parties, gatherings, some type of social event,” he said. “I was very worried.”

Freeman, who calls himself a self-taught pastry chef, is known for the unique wedding cakes and other special event cakes, cupcakes, cookies and decorative sweets tables he creates. He knew the pandemic and social distancing requirements would put the brakes on those sales, and given the family’s health issues they didn’t want to reopen the bakery cafe to the public.

Before the pandemic, about 40% of the company’s revenues came from special events, 40% from the retail store and 20% from sales to grocery stores. The pandemic prompted them to pivot. When they reopened in late March, they began to exclusively make and deliver gourmet cookies to grocery stores.

Freeman and his mom, Marilyn Freeman, said the strategic shift is paying off. They were in roughly two dozen grocery stores prior to the pandemic. Today they are in 56 stores in the Chicago metropolitan area including Jewel-Osco, Mariano’s, Walt’s Food Center and Berkot’s Super Foods stores, Marcus Freeman said.

The bakery’s track record for producing strong sales at grocery stores before the pandemic helped encourage more of its existing grocery store customers to expand Signature Sweets Factory cookies into more stores and helped attract new grocery store customers, they said.

Revenues which fell 75% during the early days of the pandemic have now recovered to 70% to 80% of where they were last year and are still expanding, he said.

“That wouldn’t have been possible if we hadn’t made the transition when we did for our own personal health but also for the business’ health,” he said.

Freeman, who employs six part-time staff, said he was able to get assistance from the Paycheck Protection Program to keep people working.

“To keep staff safe, we make sure not to have too many people working at one time,” he said. “They wear masks and face shields, and in addition spread out as much as possible in the bakery.”

The business hasn’t missed any lease payments.

“It’s been a struggle, sometimes more one month than the next, but we’ve been able to keep up,” he said.

Other challenges he has faced is getting certain ingredients including extracts and flavorings and, at times, even eggs, flour and sugar.

“I use gourmet extracts and flavorings,” he said. “Extracts are hard to get and prices have gone up substantially as well. So many people are at home, and home baking has skyrocketed.

“I now have to order about a month in advance, which is difficult. You have to have the capital to do that.”

He said it’s also hard to get gloves, and those prices have gone up too.

Legislators need to provide more assistance to small businesses in the food sector and other industries to help them survive the financial hit the pandemic is causing, he said.

“It would be beneficial for any additional help that they can provide for small businesses seeing as how we are nearly a year in the pandemic,” he said. “It’s still hard for a lot of businesses. It’s still hard for us. While we have experienced great blessings during the pandemic, it’s still very hard.”

Since the pandemic began, they have focused on improvements to their website for online sales and shipments and the introduction of new resealable packaging.

During the last two weeks in December, Signature Sweets Factory will briefly resume limited sales of cakes that can be ordered by telephone for pickup at the bakery cafe, Freeman said. After that, he doesn’t anticipate reopening the storefront to the general public until spring 2021 at the earliest.

“We’re staying up to date with local COVID updates,” he said. “We don’t want to act too quickly. We want to make sure we’re safe and everybody else is safe. We’re hoping late spring, early summer we will be able to open in a limited capacity.”

Going forward he plans for the storefront to only open one to two days for call-in and online orders for pick up and shipping.

“While I love interacting with customers and making a lot of things, I don’t have time to invest in a four- to five-day bakery as I did previously. That’s not my goal right now.”

Before the pandemic, Freeman said his longer term plans had been to focus on grocery store product sales and online sales. The pandemic sped up those efforts.

“I’ve felt the death of storefronts has been a long time coming,” he said. “I expect to see a lasting decline in sales of all types of storefronts, food storefronts. People have busy lives. A lot of people don’t have time to go to a bakery to restaurants and other places. You see the trend with Grubhub, DoorDash, even grocery stores delivering.

“Businesses that will survive this transition will need to know how to get the product to people instead of people coming to the product.”

What’s the greatest lesson he and his mom have learned due to the pandemic?

“Nothing is promised,” said Marilyn Freeman. “Expect the unexpected.”

Marcus Freeman said businesses must be willing to make changes and not be too rigid.

“I know many people told me I needed to be open seven days a week. I’m glad I didn’t listen,” he said. “They were operating off of old standards of business. You have to be able to adapt.”

Francine Knowles is a freelance columnist for the Daily Southtown

Fknowles.writer@gmail.com