The Bread Bakers Guild of America upcoming events

New Member Orientation (04/20/2026)

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 20:00:00 GMT

New Member Orientation

April 20 / 4:00 - 5:15pm ET

We’re thrilled to welcome you to the Bread Bakers Guild of America! Join us for a virtual orientation (via Zoom) to learn more about the resources, connections, and opportunities available to you as a member, including:

Connect with other Guild members and build your baking community
Meet the team and Board
Hear what's happening in education and events
Tour our website
Learn how to get the most out of your membership and how to get involved

We will hold these sessions every couple of months, and all members are invited to join us, not just our newest ones. We hope to see you there!

Craft • Culture • Careers • Community

How to Price Your Bread + Get to Know the Bread Bakers Guild of America (05/05/2026)

Tue, 05 May 2026 21:00:00 GMT

How to Price Your Bread + Get to Know the Bread Bakers Guild of America

May 5 | 5:00 - 6:00pm ET

Join us for a focused 20-minute learning session with Laurie Schive, Baker and Immediate Past Chair of the Guild’s Board of Directors, as she walks through the key factors to consider when pricing your breads and baked goods. Laurie will share the strategies she used to set prices that work for both her business and her customers, and tips for making the numbers make sense and make a profit.

Ideal for small– to medium–sized bakery owners and operators, this session is designed for those building systems or refining what’s already in place. You’ll leave with practical takeaways—and a glimpse into the kind of baker-led education the Guild offers.

After the session, stick around for a brief introduction to the Bread Bakers Guild of America with Education & Events Manager Wai Chu. You’ll learn about member benefits and how our education, events, and community support bakers at every stage of their journey. We’ll close with time for questions and conversation.

Laurie Schive

During a 20-year career with the Federal Government and a stint as a cybersecurity and risk consultant, Laurie taught herself to bake bread as a way to destress and learn how to recreate traditional baked goods in the many countries she visited. After “retiring” and resettling in New Hampshire, Laurie joined the Guild to improve her bread baking skills and connect with fellow artisan bakers, with a dream of opening up her own bakery. In 2018, the dream came true with the opening of the Blue Loon Bakery near Lake Sunapee, with a mission to bring freshly-baked breads and pastries to the local community. Laurie recently sold her bakery and is ready for her next adventure.

Craft • Culture • Careers • Community

Built to Last: The Staying Power of Great Bakeries (05/12/2026)

Tue, 12 May 2026 23:00:00 GMT

Built to Last: The Staying Power of Great Bakeries

May 12, 2026 | 7:00pm–8:00pm ET

Building a bakery that stands the test of time requires more than great bread, it demands vision, resilience, and a willingness to evolve with changing times. What does it take not only to endure, but to grow and thrive over decades?

For this special Hearthside Chat, we are honored to welcome three influential voices in American artisan baking to reflect on how their bakeries have grown and adapted over time.

Joanne Chang, Flour Bakery + Cafe

Amy Scherber, Amy’s Bread

Steven Sullivan, The Acme Bread Company

Together, these bakers have helped shape the landscape of artisan bread and pastry in the United States. In this candid conversation moderated by Karen Bornarth, Executive Director of the Bread Bakers Guild, they will share the stories behind their baking journeys—how their businesses began, the challenges they have navigated, and the decisions that allowed them to evolve with changing tastes and times while remaining grounded in their craft.

This event is part of our Hearthside Chat series and is open to Guild members only. Registration is free.

Joanne Chang, pastry chef/co-owner, Flour Bakery and co-owner Myers + Chang

James Beard Award-winning chef Joanne Chang opened the first Flour bakery in 2000. More than two decades later, she now operates eleven Flour bakeries and sister restaurant Myers + Chang in Boston/Cambridge with her husband and business partner Christopher Myers. Joanne, Flour, and Myers + Chang have garnered local and national recognition from Gourmet, Food & Wine, Bon Appetit, the New York Times, the Food Network, Conde Nast Traveler, Inc. Magazine, O Magazine, Boston Magazine, and the Boston Globe. She is the winner of the 2016 James Beard Award for Outstanding Baker. She is the author of five (soon to be 6) cookbooks, and she serves on the Board of Directors for Share Our Strength as well as Beacon Financial Corporation. Joanne appeared as a judge on the first season of Netflix’s competition show Baking Impossible. She also teaches classes and advises pastry cooks both within the bakery, at area cooking schools, and virtually with her Bake Like a Pro session on MasterClass.

Amy Scherber, Amy’s Bread

Amy Scherber is the owner and founder of Amy’s Bread, a New York City bakery that will celebrate its 34th Anniversary in June of 2026. Amy started with a staff of 5 in a small kitchen on Ninth Avenue. Today the bakery has 100 employees and features her handmade bread and wide variety of morning pastries, sandwiches and salads, cookies, bars, pies, and layer cakes. The bakery has retail cafes in Hell’s Kitchen, and Chelsea Market, and small cafes in the New York Public Library, the New York Design Center, and the Museum of the City of New York, and bread and pastry kitchens in Long Island City, Queens. Amy’s Bread is still a local neighborhood bakery and a family run business—Amy and her husband, Troy Rohne, run the company together. Everything they serve is handmade from scratch daily with great care and the best ingredients.  The bakery delivers to more than 200 wholesale customers daily, including many of NYC’s finest restaurants. Amy is the co-author of Amy’s Bread and The Sweeter Side of Amy’s Bread. She was an original member of the Bread Bakers Guild of America, since 1993.

Steven Sullivan, The Acme Bread Company

Steven and Suzie Sullivan founded The Acme Bread Company in 1983 to bake bread for restaurants and stores that wanted to offer better bread than was generally available on the wholesale market at the time. Acme is primarily a wholesale bakery but also has two retail shops: the original location in Berkeley, California, and another in San Francisco’s Ferry Building Marketplace. Acme supplies bread to dozens of restaurants around the Bay Area, including Chez Panisse—where Steven began baking bread in the seventies—as well as to a variety of grocery stores and retail locations throughout the region.

Over the past forty-some-odd years, Acme has expanded its product list from four items to more than 100. The bakery has also worked to incorporate as many organic and locally sourced ingredients as possible, proudly making the switch to 100% organic flour in 1999.

Over the years, Acme has also prioritized environmentally responsible practices, including donating fresh leftover bread to charitable organizations, schools, and nonprofits, and encouraging customers to minimize packaging by offering a discount for bread purchased without bags in its retail shops.

Karen Bornarth, Executive Director

Karen has been a member of the Guild for more than 20 years, and has served as Executive Director since June of 2022. In her work with the Guild, she supports bakery owners and professional bakers to achieve success in their baking practices and businesses through education, training, and community-building events. Prior to taking the role of ED, she spent 8 years in workforce and small business development with Hot Bread Kitchen, a nonprofit in NYC dedicated to creating economic opportunity for immigrant women and women of color through careers in food. While at HBK, Karen developed an initiative to improve job quality and business performance in small food businesses, and she oversaw a team to design and deliver a dynamic workforce development program in New York City, growing program outcomes fourfold over a three-year period. She launched her career at Amy’s Bread, one of very few women in production, and worked her way up from packer to supervisor while teaching part-time at the Artisan Baking Center.

The French Culinary Institute provided her the opportunity to focus her passion for teaching; she spent five years as the lead instructor and coordinator of their bread department, improving the curriculum and creating new classes for both professional and amateur students. She also worked for four years at Le Pain Quotidien, where she managed its Bleecker Street demonstration and teaching bakery, and then transitioned to product development, quality control and training on a national level. Through all of her years of experience as a bread baker and educator in New York City’s baking landscape, she brings a passion for education and advocacy for frontline food production workers. She is particularly interested in breaking down the systemic and structural barriers to career and economic advancement for people of color and women in the baking industry, and in cultivating and nurturing the next generation of bakers and bakery owners.

Photo of Amy Scherber by @ChelseaMarket

Photo Clipping of Steven Sullivan from www.farine-mc.com

Building Your Bakery: From Vision to Viable Business (05/26/2026)

Tue, 26 May 2026 20:00:00 GMT

Building Your Bakery: From Vision to Viable Business

Tuesday, May 26, 2026

Tuesday, June 2, 2026

Tuesday, June 9, 2026

Tuesday, June 16, 2026

Tuesday, June 23, 2026

Tuesday, June 30, 2026

4:00pm – 6:00pm ET | Via Zoom

Ready to turn your bakery idea into reality?

This exclusive six-part webinar series guides aspiring and early-stage bakery owners through the essential steps of building and running a successful bakery business. Led by experienced bakers and industry experts, each 2-hour session delivers practical strategies, real-world insights, and useful tools to help you turn your vision into a viable, working business.

Session 1: Bakery Foundations & Business Models

Starting a bakery can feel overwhelming. This session helps you cut through the noise and understand where to begin.

Understand the realities of bakery ownership, including the time and lifestyle demands

Explore different bakery models (retail, wholesale, café, production-only)

Understand your market and where opportunities and challenges may exist

Session 2: Planning, Pricing & Financial Basics

Great baked goods are only as strong as the numbers behind them. Learn the financial fundamentals every bakery owner needs to know.

Understand the difference between startup costs and operating capital

Learn what it really costs to run a bakery, from ingredients to labor to utilities

Learn the basics of pricing baked goods for profitability

Understand cash flow—and why paying yourself matters

See how all of this comes together in a workable business plan

Session 3: Business Set Up, Funding & Legal Considerations

The decisions you make early on can save—or cost—you money. Learn how to set up your business the right way from the start.

Choose the business structure that makes sense for you (sole proprietor, LLC, corporation)

Assemble your professional team—banker, accountant, and other advisors

Explore realistic options for accessing capital

Navigate taxes, permits, insurance, and other regulatory requirements

Session 4: Designing the Bakery Operation

Behind every great bakery is a system that works. This session shows you how to build the foundation that keeps things running smoothly.

Decide what products to offer—and how to keep your menu manageable

Learn how to stay organized with purchasing and inventory

Understand the essentials of food safety and sanitation

Create clear routines and guidelines so your bakery runs consistently

Session 5: Staffing, Training & Daily Management

You can’t do it all alone—at least not for long. Learn how to build a team and structure that supports your bakery (and your sanity).

Figure out when it’s time to hire—and who to hire first

Train staff to work efficiently and consistently

Build schedules that support production without exhausting your team

Handle communication and performance issues with confidence

Manage your own time and energy to avoid burnout

Session 6: Marketing, Growth & Long-Term Sustainability

Opening is just the beginning. This session focuses on building a bakery that lasts.

Define your brand and get the word out

Build and retain a loyal customer base

Track key metrics like product sales, labor, and waste

Recognize when it’s time to grow—and when it’s not

Learn from common mistakes that cause bakeries to struggle or close

Participants will leave with a clearer vision, a stronger business foundation, and a realistic understanding of what it takes to bring a bakery to life. Each session includes ample time for questions and discussion.

This series is presented in partnership with Cybake.

Craft • Culture • Careers• Community

Building Your Bakery: From Vision to Viable Business - Session 1: Bakery Foundations & Business Models (05/26/2026)

Tue, 26 May 2026 20:00:00 GMT

Building Your Bakery: From Vision to Viable Business - Session 1: Bakery Foundations & Business Models

Tuesday, May 26, 2026 | 4:00pm – 6:00pm ET

Via Zoom

Ready to turn your bakery idea into reality?

Session 1: Bakery Foundations & Business Models

Starting a bakery can feel overwhelming. This session helps you cut through the noise and understand where to begin.

Understand the realities of bakery ownership, including the time and lifestyle demands

Explore different bakery models (retail, wholesale, café, production-only)

Understand your market and where opportunities and challenges may exist

This series is presented in partnership with Cybake.

Craft • Culture • Careers• Community

Building Your Bakery: From Vision to Viable Business - Session 2: Planning, Pricing & Financial Basics (06/02/2026)

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 20:00:00 GMT

Building Your Bakery: From Vision to Viable Business - Session 2: Planning, Pricing & Financial Basics

Tuesday, June 2, 2026 | 4:00pm – 6:00pm ET Via Zoom

Ready to turn your bakery idea into reality?

Session 2: Planning, Pricing & Financial Basics

Great baked goods are only as strong as the numbers behind them. Learn the financial fundamentals every bakery owner needs to know.

Understand the difference between startup costs and operating capital

Learn what it really costs to run a bakery, from ingredients to labor to utilities

Learn the basics of pricing baked goods for profitability

Understand cash flow—and why paying yourself matters

See how all of this comes together in a workable business plan

This session is presented in partnership with Cybake.

Craft • Culture • Careers• Community

Building Your Bakery: From Vision to Viable Business - Session 3: Business Set Up, Funding & Legal Considerations (06/09/2026)

Tue, 09 Jun 2026 20:00:00 GMT

Building Your Bakery: From Vision to Viable Business - Session 3: Business Set Up, Funding & Legal Considerations

Tuesday, June 9, 2026 | 4:00pm – 6:00pm ET Via Zoom

Ready to turn your bakery idea into reality?

This exclusive six part webinar series guides aspiring and early-stage bakery owners through the essential steps of building and running a successful bakery business. Led by experienced bakers and industry experts, each 2-hour session delivers practical strategies, real-world insights, and useful tools to help you turn your vision into a viable, working business.

Session 3: Business Set Up, Funding & Legal Considerations

The decisions you make early on can save—or cost—you money. Learn how to set up your business the right way from the start.

Choose the business structure that makes sense for you (sole proprietor, LLC, corporation)

Assemble your professional team—banker, accountant, and other advisors

Explore realistic options for accessing capital

Navigate taxes, permits, insurance, and other regulatory requirements

This session is presented in partnership with Cybake.

Craft • Culture • Careers• Community

Building Your Bakery: From Vision to Viable Business - Session 4: Designing the Bakery Operation (06/16/2026)

Tue, 16 Jun 2026 20:00:00 GMT

Building Your Bakery: From Vision to Viable Business - Session 4: Designing the Bakery Operation

Tuesday, June 16, 2026 | 4:00pm – 6:00pm ET Via Zoom

Ready to turn your bakery idea into reality?

Session 4: Designing the Bakery Operation

Behind every great bakery is a system that works. This session shows you how to build the foundation that keeps things running smoothly.

Decide what products to offer—and how to keep your menu manageable

Learn how to stay organized with purchasing and inventory

Understand the essentials of food safety and sanitation

Create clear routines and guidelines so your bakery runs consistently

This session is presented in partnership with Cybake.

Craft • Culture • Careers• Community

Building Your Bakery: From Vision to Viable Business - Session 5: Staffing, Training & Daily Management (06/23/2026)

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 20:00:00 GMT

Building Your Bakery: From Vision to Viable Business - Session 5: Staffing, Training & Daily Management

Tuesday, June 23, 2026 | 4:00pm – 6:00pm ET Via Zoom

Ready to turn your bakery idea into reality?

Session 5: Staffing, Training & Daily Management

You can’t do it all alone—at least not for long. Learn how to build a team and structure that supports your bakery (and your sanity).

Figure out when it’s time to hire—and who to hire first

Train staff to work efficiently and consistently

Build schedules that support production without exhausting your team

Handle communication and performance issues with confidence

Manage your own time and energy to avoid burnout

This session is presented in partnership with Cybake.

Craft • Culture • Careers• Community

Building Your Bakery: From Vision to Viable Business - Session 6: Marketing, Growth & Long-Term Sustainability (06/30/2026)

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 20:00:00 GMT

Building Your Bakery: From Vision to Viable Business - Session 6: Marketing, Growth & Long-Term Sustainability

Tuesday, June 30, 2026 | 4:00pm – 6:00pm ET Via Zoom

Ready to turn your bakery idea into reality?

Session 6: Marketing, Growth & Long-Term Sustainability

Opening is just the beginning. This session focuses on building a bakery that lasts.

Define your brand and get the word out

Build and retain a loyal customer base

Track key metrics like product sales, labor, and waste

Recognize when it’s time to grow—and when it’s not

Learn from common mistakes that cause bakeries to struggle or close

This session is presented in partnership with Cybake.

Craft • Culture • Careers• Community