This M’sian quit accounting to focus on her online bakery specialising in flavoured loaves

If you click on the local online bakery Butter Loaf’s website, one of the first things you’ll notice is their promise of free shipping on their bread—no minimum spend needed.

You’d be amiss to think that this is a poorly thought-out initiative that might be bad for the business’s books, though. After all, the woman behind Butter Loaf is Annisa, who was an accountant long before she was a baker by profession.

Leaving corporate for the baking life

It was during the pandemic that Annisa began baking in earnest.

Working as an account executive in a corporation, Annisa started baking for friends and family initially to pass the time during the pandemic, taking advantage of the fact that she was working from home.

Noticing the bread shortages during the pandemic, she realised she could actually fill the gap in the market with her fresh bakes. Especially with the MCO, Malaysians have become accustomed to ordering online, so it made sense to open up a bakery despite having no physical presence.

“And, I also have a friend—who is now my business partner—who is recovering from cancer and hence was looking for alternative bread with minimal preservatives used,” Annisa opened up. “These got us thinking and discussing ideas on whether it is feasible for us to start off a business with these two main aims.”

When in-office work resumed, she decided to continue running the business part-time with her business partner for around a year.

“When we saw that there was demand for our bread, we foresaw that it would be hard for me to continue this on a part-time basis as my job was also very demanding,” she explained. “Since the plan is to grow the business further, I have decided to put my 100% focus on this.”

As such, she decided to resign from her corporate career and pursue Butter Loaf full-time.

Flavourful offerings

Standing out against other bread brands, Butter Loaf specialises in flavoured loaves. To ensure freshness and minimal waste, the business operates on a pre-order basis.

“Customers can place their order on our website up until 9PM for next-day delivery,” Annissa elaborated. “The delivery dates are open up to one month in advance, so they can also pick a date that they want for the delivery.”

Once orders close at 9PM, Annisa’s partner will compile the orders and pass them to her during the night. Production of the bread typically starts at around 7AM the next day. Currently, the team is using Lalamove as their delivery partner.

“The quantity varies; sometimes we have a big order and sometimes none—that’s the nature of the business,” Annisa said.

She also revealed that the highest single order Butter Loaf has received is just over RM400, where a customer had ordered the bread as farewell gifts to her colleague. 

Butter Loaf also offers a monthly subscription model, allowing loyal customers to reliably and regularly get their loaves.

Free shipping for all

Of course, we had to ask about the free shipping. As a small business that relies on Lalamove for its deliveries, it seems like a sizeable expense for the team not to charge a shipping fee.

“After studying our customers’ patterns during the early days of our business, we noticed that customers tend to abandon their shopping cart at check-out due to the additional delivery fee imposed,” Annisa explained.

“To counter this, we have changed our pricing strategy to account for inflation at the time and also absorbed the delivery costs.”

For now, the team only delivers within the Klang Valley area, so it still makes sense fiscally not to charge an extra fee.

And once the team’s orders are big enough, they do plan on looking for a permanent rider to handle deliveries.

“But for now, using Lalamove is still cost efficient for the business,” Annisa said. “At times, when there are big orders, we have had instances where we hire a part-time rider.”

Rising to the occasion

Butter Loaf isn’t the only brand that has popped up in response to the demand for fresh bread, though. And beyond other online bakeries and home bakers, they still have to compete with the commercial offerings on the market.

But Annisa doesn’t seem to be too worried about the competition and instead simply focuses on baking healthy, freshly baked loaves of bread with a Japanese style.

In fact, she said that the most challenging aspect of the business is the breadmaking itself. Since the dough is sensitive to temperature and time, it was initially hard to gauge and match the rising time of the dough until the time it was ready to be baked, especially when orders piled up.

“Baking a loaf of bread versus 20 loaves requires a different strategy and production schedule,” she explained. “During those days, there were issues with over-proofed dough, and we had to remake the batch from scratch.”

Through time and experience, though, Annisa has grown leaps and bounds with her baking chops. To accelerate her growth, the self-taught baker has recently also enrolled herself in a baking course.

Not loafing around

Starting out, Butter Loaf had been a home-based business, but the team has now moved to a baking studio to cater for the higher demand and future plans.

“For now, the plan is to operate fully online from the baking studio while my partner sources for potential collaborations with cafes and stores,” Annisa said.

The aim is to either offer a combo delivery of Butter Loaf bread with their products or place the bread at their store.

“So far, we have managed to secure one consignment placement with a café,” Annisa said.

In the next three to five years, though, Annisa hopes to open up a physical bakery. With that ambition in mind, the team will focus on R&D to produce more bread varieties while drumming up the necessary capital to facilitate the shift.

Given how the team was able to critically solve problems such as the cart abandonment issue, it seems like they’ll be able to rise to the challenges that may come as they continue to scale up.  

Featured Image Credit: Butter Loaf