Menu Design, Optimization, and Pricing (All Three Parts)

March 16, 23 & 30 / 5:00 - 6:00 pm ET

Your menu is more than a list of items—it’s a powerful tool to boost sales and shape your brand. A well-designed menu guides customer choices, highlights your best offerings, and helps your business run efficiently. Join Ederique Goudia, Founder of In the Business of Food (IBF Detroit) and Manager of the Shed 5 Incubator Kitchen at Eastern Market for an interactive three-part workshop designed to give early-stage bakers the skills to create menus that delight customers and drive profitability.   

Across the three sessions, you’ll learn key strategies in menu design, optimization, and pricing.  

Part 1: Menu Design (March 16)  

• Developing a cohesive menu concept  

• Incorporating seasonal and local ingredients  

• Balancing variety and specialization  

• Organizing menu sections for maximum impact  

• Highlighting unique selling points  

• Using descriptive language to enhance perceived value  

Part 2: Menu Optimization (March 23)  

• Identifying top sellers and underperforming items  

• Understanding product mix and contribution margins  

• Utilizing data to make informed decisions  

• Optimizing ingredient crossover  

• Balancing complexity and efficiency in production  

• Managing inventory and reducing waste  

• Seasonal menu updates and limited-time offerings  

Part 3: Pricing Strategies (March 30)  

• Calculating food cost percentages  

• Understanding direct and indirect costs  

• Setting profit margin goals  

• Implementing food cost percentage pricing  

• Utilizing value-based pricing techniques  

• Creating loyalty programs and incentives  

By the end of this series, you’ll have actionable tools to build a menu that reflects your brand, streamlines operations, and strengthens your bottom line.  

Buy the series and save $5 per session!  Or, these sessions can also be purchased individually:  

• Part 1: Menu Design  
• Part 2: Menu Optimization  
• Part 3: Pricing Strategies 

Ederique Goudia

Ederique “Chef E” Goudia brings together a deep passion for food, community, and equity as a chef and food business leader rooted in Detroit, Michigan.  With over 25 years of experience, she has dedicated her career to supporting under-resourced food entrepreneurs and advancing sustainable, inclusive approaches to entrepreneurship and community building. 

As founder of In the Business of Food (IBF Detroit) and manager of the Shed 5 Incubator Kitchen at Eastern Market, Chef E provides hands-on coaching and resources that help emerging food businesses grow and thrive. As a speaker and facilitator, she has shared her expertise at the Culinary Institute of America, the University of Michigan, and beyond, offering insights on food justice, entrepreneurship, and child nutrition. 

Her leadership and impact have been recognized by outlets such as National Geographic, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, NPR, and the James Beard Foundation. In addition to business coaching, Chef E uplifts her community through board service with Detroit Food Academy, Village Community Development Corporation, and Eastside Community Network, continuing her mission to inspire, empower, and nourish her community. 

Menu Design, Optimization, and Pricing

Part 3: Pricing Strategies

March 30 / 5:00 - 6:00 pm ET

Your menu is more than a list of items—it’s a powerful tool to boost sales and shape your brand. A well-designed menu guides customer choices, highlights your best offerings, and helps your business run efficiently. Join Ederique Goudia, Founder of In the Business of Food (IBF Detroit) and Manager of the Shed 5 Incubator Kitchen at Eastern Market for an interactive three-part workshop designed to give early-stage bakers the skills to create menus that delight customers and drive profitability.   

Across the three sessions, you’ll learn key strategies in menu design, optimization, and pricing.  

Part 3: Pricing Strategies 

• Calculating food cost percentages  

• Understanding direct and indirect costs  

• Setting profit margin goals  

• Implementing food cost percentage pricing  

• Utilizing value-based pricing techniques  

• Creating loyalty programs and incentives  

By the end of this series, you’ll have actionable tools to build a menu that reflects your brand, streamlines operations, and strengthens your bottom line.  

Ederique Goudia

Ederique “Chef E” Goudia brings together a deep passion for food, community, and equity as a chef and food business leader rooted in Detroit, Michigan.  With over 25 years of experience, she has dedicated her career to supporting under-resourced food entrepreneurs and advancing sustainable, inclusive approaches to entrepreneurship and community building. 

As founder of In the Business of Food (IBF Detroit) and manager of the Shed 5 Incubator Kitchen at Eastern Market, Chef E provides hands-on coaching and resources that help emerging food businesses grow and thrive. As a speaker and facilitator, she has shared her expertise at the Culinary Institute of America, the University of Michigan, and beyond, offering insights on food justice, entrepreneurship, and child nutrition. 

Her leadership and impact have been recognized by outlets such as National Geographic, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, NPR, and the James Beard Foundation. In addition to business coaching, Chef E uplifts her community through board service with Detroit Food Academy, Village Community Development Corporation, and Eastside Community Network, continuing her mission to inspire, empower, and nourish her community. 

Guild Office Hours: Bagels

March 31 / 4PM - 5PM ET

Join us for the next session of Guild Office Hours, a free virtual series created exclusively for Guild members. In these sessions, we invite industry experts to share their skills and answer your questions about baking and the business behind it. 

This time, we welcome Ethan Marks—Baker and Bagel Specialist—for a deep dive into all things bagels. Ethan will begin with an overview of the bagel‑making process and share his expertise on making sourdough bagels. 

After that, the hour is yours. Bring your questions—big or small—for an open Q&A. Whether you’re curious about ingredients, technique, equipment, or scaling up production, this is your chance to get real‑time guidance from an expert. 

Join us—and bring your questions! 

Ethan Marks is a baker, educator, and consultant specializing in bagel production. As part of the team at Apollo Bagels—known for its sourdough bagels—he helped grow the business from a single retail location to six successful stores across New York and New Jersey. Ethan also serves as chair of the Guild’s Programs Committee. 

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

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 

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