After you have signed your franchise agreement, you will begin working closely with a tracker from the Start-Up department. The tracker's role is to help you step-by-step with all the aspects of opening a strong and exciting bakery. You will spend a great deal of time with him or her on the telephone going through checklist after checklist to make sure you have everything in place before opening day. After your franchise agreement is signed you will receive the Start-Up Kit.

We want you to benefit from our knowledge of opening bakeries for over thirty years, so he or she will help you with the do's and don'ts of running a retail operation. Some of the things may not make sense at first. This is where we ask you to trust us. We've seen what works and what doesn't. You are paying for the benefit of learning from other people's mistakes, so please take advantage of this.

A location hunter will help you work through the location hunting process. You will be required to complete preliminary location search work. This can take up to a month if you work on it full-time. After that, your location hunter will come to your community and will evaluate the locations you have selected. He will provide you with feedback on the pros and cons of each location and prepare a financial analysis. The location hunter will leave you with a detailed report and help draft Letters of Intent for promising locations. The location hunter also will review your lease and make suggestions as you negotiate with landlords.

In addition to Dillon Learning Week, at least one person will spend another week in Dillon for “Bread Week Training”. This week consists of five full days of production-focused training. The purpose of this training is to become proficient in bread-making and sweets-making skills. By the end of the week, you should be a pro at making Great Harvest products!

The next portion of training includes one week (five consecutive days) of training in an established training bakery of our choice. We have a list of about twenty host training bakeries around the country. During this training, you will get a glimpse of what it is like to live the life of a Great Harvest bakery owner. At your host bakery training, you will get up early in the morning to bake the bread, serve customers, and see the overall operations of the bakery. This training should also be the most fun part of your start-up experience. You will form relationships and friendships you can draw on later as you become more active in the Learning Community.

One of the most important things we hope you learn during your bakery training is that Great Harvest bakeries don't have to be clones of one another to be good. Many people find this a big surprise at first. New owners always want to know, "Who is right?" We'll make strong recommendations on the best way for you to build your business. That said, you will be exposed to many different business models. You can choose to implement the ideas you like best. The way we see it, diversity is strength, not a weakness. And thanks to the freedom that Great Harvest bakery owners enjoy, the new ideas of today often lead to the innovations of tomorrow.

Armed with your bakery training and your Start-Up Kit, you begin searching for equipment and fine-tuning your marketing plan. With a signed lease, major equipment in hand – an oven, a mixer, and mill – we're between two and three months from opening day. We design your layout together. The equipment search is narrowed to a short list of hard-to-find items. With your tracker's help, you set a work timetable, listing what to do yourself and what to contract out. Heavy destruction and reconstruction begins.

This is the time to buy insurance, get a phone installed, and get to know your Health Department. The exterior signage is designed. Your storefront features a "Coming Soon" banner and a big poster hangs in your window explaining who you are and what Great Harvest is all about. Pre-opening and opening promotion is planned and started.

You are getting close to opening day.

Step 7: Open Bakery