By Mark Friend and Margi Swords

It was a crazy time for our young company. We founded Farm to Market Bread Co. in 1995, and by 1998 we were growing at a rate of more than 30 percent a year. We went from $900,000 in sales in 1998 to more than $1.3 million in 1999. We were really focused on branding, telling people who we were and what we were about. Many people didn't know we were a Kansas City-based company.

Hitting $1,000,000
While it was exciting, we really didn't celebrate because Mark had been diagnosed with leukemia that fall. So at the same time we were reaching our first million, we were making plans for Mark to be gone for a bone marrow transplant. He was gone from the business from January to summer that year. Plus, we were still on our 30 percent growth trend so there was hardly time to stop and realize what we had accomplished.

Setting the Goal
It is always important to have goals and a plan to implement those goals. We had developed a strategic plan the year before that we were implementing. That helped us gain the momentum we needed. We were monitoring sales constantly.

How It Changed Us
With the increase in sales came an increase in volume. We bake and deliver bread fresh every day to our customers. To meet the increased demand for our products, we had to purchase larger mixers and bakery equipment. We had been profitable the year before so we were able to pay for the additional expenses. Because of our strategic plan, we had staff responsibilities defined so we just had to hire more office and bakery staff to handle the increase in business as it came.

We made changes in the bakery to make the production line more efficient, and we added to our office space. We also gained some negotiating power because of our volume and improved our costs for packaging and ingredients.

We were able to develop new products and new markets. We looked at our high volume grocery stores and really pushed to increase the quantity of products available in those stores. We implemented an in-store baking program with Hen House Markets. Hen House purchased special ovens and we trained bakers so we could send our bread to the stores to be baked onsite.

Second Million and Beyond
The first million came fast and furious, but $2 million eluded us for years by about 2 percentage points. The Atkins Diet craze impacted our business and it took us a few years to climb out of that. But last year we hit the $2 million mark. The good news is that we didn't just make it, we exceeded our projections. And this time we were very excited.

When we realized we were going to hit $2 million, we made sure all the staff knew. Everyone was on board. We bought a lot of lunches and dinners for the bakery staff to keep them going and to show them we appreciated their hard work. Our bread is made by hand and $2 million is a lot of loaves of bread. Our bakery staff produced approximately 125,000 loaves of artisan bread just in the month of December.

We have developed a strategic plan for this year, which includes our 15th anniversary in September.


Mark Friend is president and owner and Margi Swords is operations manager for Farm to Market Bread Company. You can reach them at (816) 363-3198 or