After finally leaving the rat race of the U.S., my husband Keith and I were exhausted. We were looking forward to retirement. Looking forward to lots of time spent doing…nothing.
But the truth is, after decades of hard work, doing nothing except reading or exercising seems like a waste. Today, we live in a sleepy fishing village on the eastern side of Mexico’s Baja peninsula. It’s a great place to chill out and go slow, which is exactly what a lot of the other retired expats here do. But Keith and I couldn’t quite settle to that pace. We have time and we have energy, despite our senior years. We were both self-employed before we retired, so we weren’t afraid to take chances and initiate projects using our own self-discipline.
When we moved here in April 2021, we explored various local charities and considered volunteering. One charity didn’t respond to my volunteer application… because they were short on volunteers. Another woman asked me if I was interested in doing the books for a local charity. Not really. I wanted to do things that excited me.
Keith was in a similar slump. He wanted to do something productive, but it seemed there was always an obstacle: He couldn’t get the right tools, his skills weren’t needed, sourcing the supplies he needed would make the cost prohibitive, on and on.
We weren’t exactly in the doldrums, but our family grew concerned that we’d lost our zest for life and would vegetate in front of the television and become lonely and asocial. We were far from that state, we were just waiting for the right opportunity to present itself.
When that opportunity came, we didn’t even realize it. We didn’t deliberately set out to start a business. It just happened.
Like most Americans, we were used to an abundance of ethnic cuisines in the U.S. Before Mexico, we lived in Italy for two years and we noticed that Italians, by and large, eat only Italian food. There wasn’t a Mexican or Asian restaurant to be found within 100 miles of our town. I craved Mexican food and ordered essential ingredients (like cilantro and cumin) from other countries so I could make my own Mexican food.
Now that we’re living in a Mexican fishing village, we’ve noticed that the diet is pretty much, well, Mexican. We found ourselves craving Italian food, especially pasta. And, as in Italy, the solution was to make it ourselves.
I had been making pasta for decades, long before we moved to Italy. So I had my hand-cranked Cavatelli maker and my direct-from-Italy noodle maker. And I still had the right flour from Italy. It hit us, as we were dining on a dinner of handmade pasta and fresh sauce that maybe other expats here would like some of this deliciousness? And the idea to sell handmade gourmet food items was born.
We heard that the local swap meet/ farmers’ market was starting up again post-COVID, so our first call was to find out how much a table would cost. The answer: Zip! That got us really got excited, so I created labels for the multitudes of pasta bags we envisioned making and selling at the market.
And then we thought, well, if people are buying handmade pasta, then they will probably want some of our handmade Italian bread, made with the Italian sourdough starter that I had been nurturing for years. For decades, I have loved baking various breads, so why not share my breads with others too?
Years ago, I had bought baking molds for various sizes of baguettes, brioche tins, tart pans, cookie stamps of assorted sizes and shapes…and endured the mockery of friends who couldn’t understand why I’d waste money on something so frivolous. Forty years later, those “frivolous” purchases have now transformed into the vital tools of my trade.
We had no expectations for selling a lot. Our primary goal was, and is, to share our handmade goods with others, meet our neighbors in the process, and if we made a few dollars as we were doing it—at least enough to cover the cost of ingredients— that would be a bonus.
On our second visit to the market, a couple accosted us as we were parking the car and bought the entirety of our baked goods and pasta before we’d even unloaded everything from our vehicle. We looked at each other in astonishment; we really did have a product of interest. The lesson we learned that day was that we needed to be baking more…lots more.
We also soon realized that making something for ourselves is drastically different than appealing and selling to strandream gers. What might have been “good enough” for us was definitely not good enough for our customers. And so, we became obsessed with experimenting. We worked on different shapes, sizes, glazes, packaging, just perfecting the presentation of our goods as well as the flavors.
From Italian sourdough bread and pasta, we decided to expand our inventory to include bagels and English muffins. Nobody was selling either of those in our town, so we figured that could be an underserved niche for us. Again, we experimented to gauge our customers’ preferences. When other vendors started copying our products, we knew that we were getting noticed.
We delved feverishly into our favorite foods, and figured out how to replicate them here in Mexico. Muffins, crumpets, wholewheat bread, ciabatta, rye bread… we were limited only by our imagination. And as the weather started getting warm, we noticed less enthusiasm for our hearty breads and more interest in our pastries.
We considered our little domestic kitchen as our own Test Kitchen. If Betty Crocker needed a test kitchen, so did we: cookies, cakes, candies. I experimented with different flavorings, mixed components of different recipes, and we opened the valve on our creativity. Gradually, what started as a fun little hobby mushroomed into a viable business. But importantly, it’s one that we control. If we don’t feel like making English muffins this week, we don’t have to. No one is ordering us around.
If we sell no baked goods at the swap meet next week, it won’t throw us into despair; we’ll still meet and chat with neighbors, we’ll still have enjoyed the baking process, and we’ll have lots of leftover food to eat ourselves.
But to our delight, the customers keep coming. New ones. Repeat customers. All clamoring for this or that. We quickly learned to take orders for sold-out items. We also learned to set limits, for example, in creating a minimum order size. We take orders online and over the phone, so nobody has to wait till the swap meet for their favorite baked item.
You don’t stop being who you are in retirement.
We started with one small table to display our goods, but within a couple of “You don’t stop being who you are in retirement.” “We have lovingly created what we sell.” weeks, it was too crowded. Keith bought a six-foot table. We grew out of that. Now, we’ve added the small table, and we have 10 feet to display our wares.
We had so much variety and quantity that some potential customers assumed we had bought the items and were re-selling, until we set them straight on our baking schedule (which we plot every Sunday afternoon for the following week).
A local café owner called us out of nowhere to ask for a meeting. We had no idea why he wanted to meet with us, but in line with our personalities, we figured “why not?” We were surprised when he asked if we would supply him with pastries for his café. That’s been a great adventure, and an awesome supplement to our swap-meet table.
We have lovingly created what we sell.
Buoyed by the success of our collaboration with the café owner, Keith prospected for other outlets, and we approached a local deli owner with our basket of arrayed breads. She added our baguettes to her stock, which paired well with her meats and cheeses.
Keith initially pitched in to simply support my baking venture. My hobby. He didn’t expect that he would be seduced by the creativity. And it is creative. It’s about dreaming up different items to offer, analyzing our clientele’s buying habits, designing different packaging to showcase our products. Then there’s the left-brain stuff: pricing everything to cover our costs, make a little profit, and yet maintain pricing that is within reach of the expats here.
Keith gets to use all his expert salesmanship when selling our products; he is the master of upselling: “Here are the cookies you wanted, but did you taste Anne’s newest creation?” We put our heart and soul into our customer interactions, so it’s an experience, not just a transaction.
I think that’s one reason for our success. We see the apathy of our copycat bread sellers (some of whom have audaciously parked their tables very close to ours in order to poach our customers). Usually there’ll be a young person sitting behind the table, playing with their cellphone, never looking up unless someone stops and says, “I want to buy this.”
We engage with our customers because they’re our neighbors, first and foremost. We have lovingly created what we sell, and we guarantee what we sell. We know the ingredients, the cooking process, and how many modifications I had to make to create a perfect something.
There’s a story behind all our products, too. This sourdough starter came from Naples; this was my mother’s date bar recipe; I make my own pie filling, not canned; these candies won Best in Show at a state fair; Keith zests the lemons and oranges that we use; we use only 100% organic, natural peanut butter. This kind of information makes our products more appealing and worth the price.
We also know our niche. If someone asks me if I make sugar-free or gluten-free foods, well, no, I don’t. I’m not interested in that, don’t enjoy it, and don’t want to add that to our already-full repertoire of goods. We know our limits.
Keith and I get to use all the skills we’ve honed in our years as entrepreneurs: marketing, salesmanship, analysis, costing, relationship-building. And today we’re applying all those skills to make our bakery business successful.
We’ve met so many would-be retirees that are petrified of becoming useless in retirement, afraid that they’d be bored with nothing at all to occupy their minds or bodies. They think we’re brave to start a business but it really was just a natural extension of who we are. You don’t stop being who you are in retirement, and we’re proof of that.
The swap meet takes a break for the hot summer season, and our neighbors have been concerned about what we’re going to do during this “down” time. Us? Worried? We have no end of ideas to test out, and we’re eager to strategize our seasonal offerings once the selling season restarts.
Most importantly, Keith and I feel productive, creative, and we’re working well as business partners. If we get tired of baking one day, then we can always switch to selling Keith’s woodworking products. Our hobbies provide us with the best retirement imaginable. Nothing is stopping us.
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