Now, you're about three weeks from opening. We go over a long final checklist to be sure nothing important is left undone or unpurchased. This ensures that when your training team arrives, their full energy goes to teaching, not problem solving. You hire your employees, following a specific hiring method we've found works best. We go over the first week's schedule and make a plan for training.

Opening training takes ten days, usually representing around 150 hours of work on our part. Training teams usually consist of two people from the franchise office and at least one established bakery owner.

During training, two themes are central: the quality of the bread and building bakery morale. We want a business that will shine. That means, first and foremost, taking care of people: employees, owners, and customers. Profits follow directly from that. We try to leave you with an upbeat, well-trained crew, while also helping you fine-tune your skills. We want to make sure you'll be prepared for the day you'll have to train some future employees on your own. Our goal is to lay a solid foundation of product quality, excellent customer service, strong marketing efforts, happy employees, and tight business systems.

Nothing makes us more proud than watching you open those doors on your grand opening day. You did it, and you're now in the business of baking great whole wheat bread for your neighbors.

For your first 6 to 12 months, you’ll work closely with a post-opening specialist who will help you solidify the foundation established during your opening. After that, your field representative will become your main contact with the home office. Your field rep’s mission is to help you grow your bakery.

We provide you with ongoing marketing support, production guidance, training materials for employees, recipe development, practical business advice, expert field visits and a group-purchasing program. Our annual convention, the Breadboard (our internal intranet), newsletters, e-mail bulletins from the field reps are some great examples of ongoing communication between the home office and our bakery owners. We’ve developed several product-line extension programs as well. Some of these are available for you to select when you open (gift cards, full-line coffee/espresso and fresh ground mixes to name a few). Other programs, such as our sandwich program and hard crusted bread can be added after you have built a strong foundation for your business. Our Learning Community provides a constant stream of production innovation.

When neighboring Great Harvest owners desire to work cooperatively on marketing and other issues, we are available to help organize and facilitate. We also provide you with the best bread-baking wheat available by identifying suppliers who meet our strict standards for wheat quality and business practices. The Franchise Agreement requires you to buy wheat only from our approved suppliers, which maintains quality standards and helps you produce the freshest, most nutritionally rich and phenomenal-tasting bread!

In talking with candidates and new owners over the years, we’ve often heard that the marketing aspect of this business is one of the most valuable and exciting, yet intimidating fundamental. In response, we’ve built systems of turnkey marketing kits that can be used for special events and holidays, as well as for each month. We work closely with a marketing board composed of experienced bakery owners who share their ideas and offer guidance from the field.

We don’t collect an advertising fee, so you have the freedom and responsibility to spend your marketing dollars wisely at the local level to reinforce your status within your community as a locally owned and operated business. Within the overall brand umbrella, you create an authentic and personalized representation of the Great Harvest brand in your market. As a member of the Freedom Franchise®, you receive the benefit of professional tools developed at the national level, combined with your own experience and that of our learning community, to execute your marketing plan.

Between 6 and 12 months, you will start working with your field representative whose sole job is to help you grow your bakery. Your ongoing royalty helps support this invaluable one-on-one resource. Feel free to call on anyone at the franchise office anytime. And don't forget about the Learning Community. There are over two hundred other bakery owners out there that have gone through many of the things you'll go through. Get connected. Tap into their experience and advice with "The Breadboard", Great Harvest's online extranet site hosting online discussions, internal news, and downloadable resources. You'll be asking a lot of questions at first, and that's OK. The Learning Community's a two-way street. Don't forget to pay it forward.

Step 8: Living Your Dream