Maite García (Barcelona, 40 years old) and Luis Cuesta (Barcelona, 41 years) serve the video call from the garage of his house, in Utrera (Seville). In space they are not seen or intuited by this stay. There are no vehicles, bicycles or tool storage cabinets. The walls look a nuclear target and while talking, the couple relies on the work table on which she, from Monday to Thursday, kneads, shape and packages the loaves she previously sells on request. «I regret not having done this before,» he says about Spiga, the micropanadería that they set up a little over a year ago and that exemplifies a business format, usual in countries such as France, the United States and the United Kingdom, and that in Spain has not stopped growing from the pandemic. Cut and Garcia try to give a personal definition of micropanadería, since there is no officer as such. Both comment that it is a business with a limited production – ”although there is a very fine line,” he says – largely marked by the work tools such as semi -professional ovens – the most appointed, Rofco B40 – and that they are self -employment projects with between one or two workers. Another characteristic, in his opinion, «is that they take great care of the product.» “We are faithful to the processes. We work with long fermentations and only make bread with mother dough. ” The flours they use, for example, are all ecological wheat, semi integral, spelled or rye and now they will start working with a project that recovers old wheats in round. The prices range from the five euros of the most normal hagazas to 8 euros of special breads such as hazelnut and chocolate and those who only have regular customers access. Orders are collected on Wednesdays or Thursdays at two different points of Utrera, but recently they also ship to the entire peninsula.Maite García, Spiga baker, during a production day in the workshop. Paco Puentesgarcía has managed to reconcile his professional and personal life, after knowing another reality working in hospitality. It has gone from being away from home to make a weekly day that does not arrive at 30 hours and free from Friday to Sunday. She and costs that her business is profitable, but they are aware that there are a series of circumstances that help it be: they make a unique and demanded product in their locality, they have solar panels that help energy saving and do not pay rent. They estimate that their total investment is around 30,000 euros, but it costs, which disseminates the business model through YouTube – with more than 3,000 subscribers – and advice, believes that it can be made “with a minimum of between 8,000 and 12,000 euros”, a disbursement much lower than the traditional format and that increasingly attracts the attention of more people. «We have every month full with advice until June,» he confesses. “There is a brutal trend of micropanaderies. They are booming. But in addition, as indicated in one of its multiple tutorials, to have a micropanadería that complies with the legality, it is necessary to consult the authorities of each municipality if possible or not carry out the activity in the area in which it is desired. The headline, who must have the food manipulator card and be discharged as an autonomous, also has to present an app (hazard analysis and critical control points) to reduce the possibilities of food poisoning as well as a descriptive memory with planes of the workshop. This has to be separated from domestic areas, although sometimes the activity is exercised in a place outside the house.
Conversion to traditional establishment
In some cases, the organic growth of the business causes the owners to make the path of micropanading conversion to a major format, that of the traditional bakery. This step is the one that Juan Manuel Rodríguez, owner of Panhabla and a benchmark for others that continued to assemble «a domestic bread workshop», as he calls him. Salido from the Bakero School that is the Obrador Panic, in Madrid, and influenced by three other professionals with micropanaderías – Chabe Ceballos, Luis Mateos (neighborhood bread) and Águeda, of Panaticum – Manuel saw in the small business model the possibility of having something of his own with just 5,000 euros of investment. He began uploading photos of the bread to Instagram, producing about 80 breads a week and gradually thickened his list of customers until he counted, in 2023, about 260 products sold a week. «I was very good at my house, I didn't want to grow, but either the production was going down or took the step,» he said about the decision he made in the spring of 2024. He took a place that had closed by retirement and now has two other employees and always has all the breads of his previous letter and 11 sweets, even those who had to introduce or temporarily take out due to lack of capacity. «I have no great variety, my philosophy is to have great quality,» he says. Traitor in the workshop is equivalent only to a small part of Rodríguez's workday, which in 2020 began to receive people in his workshop to teach them and whose experience reflects in small tutorials in his YouTube account, with 75,000 followers. Even today, now in its bakery, this kind of students spend between one and two weeks, depending on the previous experience, soaking up the artisanal trade, but also of the management work. One of them was Pere Pons, who along with his partner, Cristina Benítez, set up a micro -corner in the municipality of Camarasa, in Lleida. «A moment of frantic rhythm arrived and we wanted to make a change of life,» explains Pons, 48, a pastry chef and who was previously linked to a family business to make sweets, breads, menus and catering. From that need arose Pa de Cótó (cotton bread, in Spanish), an operator located in a farmhouse from the beginning of the 20th century, his house. “I saw that there was a business model that could apply to my change of life. I knew how to make bread, but of another kind, I was interested and I went two weeks with Juan to learn the business model and management of mother mass. I could do it at home and allows you to reconcile with the family, ”he adds. For him, a micropanadería is not just a small -scale production, but it entails «values» and integrate «health, environment and sustainability.» This happens, in his opinion, goes through the use of ecological flours to make loaves of long fermentations and mother and mass mass. After a while, it was time to monetize but not before becoming known in local fairs and markets, and now produce about 250 weekly products between loafers, muffins, cookies and biscuits. “We have an order form and a list of customers at WhatsApp. We create a dissemination message and every Sunday they receive the notification to order until Monday night. We download the orders to produce and adjust the amounts according to that. Everything that is manufactured is sold in advance, ”Pons details about operation. The delivery is made at home. “We would have the capacity to increase production because every week a new customer enters, but we no longer make promotion. We are going to try to dedicate ourselves to something that we are self -sufficient, ”he adds. Both he, as his partner – from a massive and aesthetic profession – live the business.
An example in the French countryside
In the Meyfrenie, two hours from Bordeaux by car and in the French region of Aquitaine, Adrià Rodríguez acts as a baker domesticating a oven with firewood from the nineteenth century. It is the main peculiarity of Folle Farine, the micropanadería that he launched thanks to the dissemination of Juan Manuel Rodríguez of his Panhabla project. Just preparing the baking takes about three hours every morning, so he tries to optimize his time and resources as much as possible. It works alone and has the capacity to produce between 70 and 75 loaves. «With a baked at the economic level, salary is very fair, but two require a lot of time: three and a half hours to heat and then the entire part of the preparation, production, cleaning, accounting … It is a very particular case,» he tells the phone, this diploma in tourism and tongues and modern literature that ran into the world of masses and flours in pandemic. Business, but for now, and unlike the micropanaderies that work on request, sell the breads that elaborate – 100% mother mass and with ground ecological flours -, in the verteillac market that is celebrated every Saturday. In your case, it does not have it easy. He blames it to its location, in a very rural area, where to attract the attention of the local population «is very complicated.» Of course, don't regret it.