I spent 9 months working on my business plan. It ended up being over 40 pages, plus I had my CPA work on the numbers, projections, break even point chart, etc. I had about 14 color graphs in mine. I'm not sure a template would have worked for me. You can search the internet for some basic helpful ideas and samples to follow, but each area is unique.
There was just too much research specific to my area (population of my area; number of marriage licenses issues; rate of weddings per capita; rate x population = number of potential weddings x average cost of wedding x 50% of it is spent on receptions = total potential business in wedding receptions). Whew!! Then there is the research on the competition (that was about 4 pages). I was lucky to work with a company that reviews business plans before you go to the bank. It cost me $1500 and was well worth it! They rejected it back to me about 4 times before I got the green light.
A good business plan will take a lot of time and research. I was really naive and thought I could throw one together in a weekend! (Everyone look hard and you can see the phrase "What a Moran!" tattooed on her forehead!)
If you want to contact me via my website, I'll be happy to give you more detail on what I did with mine ..... it's just too long to post here.
This is not bakery specific, but I reccomend The One Page Business Plan by Jim Horan.
man...
I worked on mine for almost a whole year! there is a lot of research. You can get help from your local SCORE and the SBA people.
There is a book out there that I got from Amazon.com , called HOW TO RUN A SUCESSFUL BAKERY ( I think ) It came with a CD-ROM disc with a template for a bakery business plan.
but you STILL have to do all of the research, the number crunching and you must have the competitors information in your plan.
The bank wants to know EVERYTHING..
I will post more on this tomorrow, if I can find this tread again!
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