Help Nightingale Breads Finance for the Future

Jessie Frost is organizing this fundraiser.

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Hi all! Jessie here, owner of Nightingale Breads. I’ve launched this fundraising campaign in an effort to fund some greatly needed equipment purchases and upgrades for the bakery this coming year. What follows is a description of our current needs and an idea of what’s next for Nightingale.

Chiefly among our large equipment purchases is our need for a commercial generator. Over these last few years, with the threat of flood, fires, and the PSPS events from PGE, it has become increasingly clear how much value a generator would have for our small operation. With this most recent rain storm the bakery was without power for a 12 hour period, but many other local businesses suffered much longer outages. Without proper refrigeration for an extended period of time, that leads to loss of ingredients and product, and in inability to operate without lights and hot water. As it’s become clear that these sorts of interruptions in business will continue to happen, we’ve decided this purchase will be a great asset for us. The cost to purchase and install a commercial generator would be somewhere between $8,000 to $12,000, depending on what sort of work needs to be done in preparation for installation (i.e generator housing).

I took over the business approximately 3 years ago and since then our vision has grown substantially. We’ve expanded our product line and added new menu selections. In doing so we’ve expanded our storage needs. Last year we purchased a freezer but we now find ourselves in need of more refrigeration space to accommodate more storage for ingredients and prepared items. We’re looking to purchase a large countertop refrigerator for approximately $6,000 as well as a new merchandiser fridge for between $2,000 to $3,000. We also would like to replace our commercial slicer. It works in its current state, but the model is inefficient and incredibly noisy, which is not ideal for use during our open retail hours. A new slicer of the kind we’re hoping to purchase will cost approximately $4,000.

Our last major investment will be the refresh and upgrades for our shop interior. Since March of 2020 we’ve been operating with a pickup window model. This has allowed us to continue operations in a safe manner, and since March 2020 we’ve had ZERO workplace Covid infections. Because of this, we’ve been able to continue baking, something we are very grateful for. As we all learn to live with Covid many have asked why we haven’t opened our doors yet. When we reorganized the shop to our current setup, we did so for the long haul, with the knowledge that things could become worse and infection rates could go up. It’s now been a year and half with our current setup, and while we are eager to open the store back up again, we have some changes we would like to make before we welcome customers back inside. Mainly, we are designing a new bread display, pastry case, and merchandising shelving. The bakery is in need of interior and exterior painting, as well as some flooring repair in the retail area. We plan to continue the use of our online preordering system, but to do so we are in need of a bakery computer for staff to use to manage the online store and other bakery operations.

We greatly appreciate any amount you are able to give to fund the growth of our little bakery. Nightingale Breads is very much a community supported bakery and we are so grateful for all the local folks who come out and buy bread regularly. We’ve opted to try crowdfunding because we know many people in our community care about the success of Nightingale Breads. Our current plans to reorganize and get the shop ready to open will go forward regardless, but with your help we can limit the financial burden on the business and purchase everything needed for this new vision, expand our production ability and streamline our operations in the future.