LENEXA, KAN. — Markey Culver, founder and chief executive officer of The Women’s Bakery, and Pauline Kariuki, chief operating officer, visited the Corbion offices in Lenexa, Kan., to share their plans and needs for 2024 with the wider US baking industry. 

The Women’s Bakery was founded in Kigali, Rwanda, on the idea that an empowered and employed woman can empower and uplift her community, and it aims to do this through a loaf of bread. In 2015, Culver founded the social enterprise to provide Rwandan women a path to education and employment so that they can provide for their families. Through the One Bread Project, The Women’s Bakery also feeds more than 20,000 Rwandan schoolchildren a day. 

The Women’s Bakery does all this by hiring women, many of whom aren’t educated, and provides them with more than 150 hours of training. At the end of the program, the women have a vocational degree that’s accredited by the Workforce Development Association. These women then staff the three bakeries The Women’s Bakery operates in rural Rwanda to bake bread for the One Bread Project as well as to sell in local markets.

While this business model has significantly impacted women, their communities and the schoolchildren it feeds, it has yet to become profitable, and Culver and Kariuki are spending 2024 seeking a pathway to profitability for the company so it can continue having a positive impact on the lives of Rwandan women and schoolchildren.

“We have to be commercially viable to fulfill our mission,” Culver said emphatically. “We have to start there in order to continue our mission.”

The cost of social enterprise

Operating in Rwanda and its challenging lack of infrastructure — the three bakeries regularly struggle with inconsistent electricity — The Women’s Bakery found itself hit harder than Western industry by the impacts of the pandemic and the ripple effects of global unrest. The pandemic forced The Women’s Bakery to close its café and decimated revenue-generating bread sales at markets. Kariuki said the cost of flour has stabilized since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — the bakery’s main source of flour — but costs have skyrocketed over the past two years. 

In addition to these new challenges, The Women’s Bakery’s very nature as a social enterprise can be a drain on revenue. The company pays its employees higher wages than competitors and provides a benefits package such as financial literacy training, on-site day care and medical coverage. 

“If we killed our social programs, I believe our bakeries would be profitable very quickly,” Kariuki said. “But then we are just another bakery business, and we aren’t The Women’s Bakery anymore. Prioritizing social programs comes with a cost, and the margins get smaller. That’s why we are looking for resilient partners who can help us continue social programs.” 

As a bakery aiming to empower women, those social programs, such as on-site day care, are often critical to hiring women in a country where men traditionally work outside of the home and women take care of the children. Financial literacy training helps employees understand budgeting and saving and guards them from victimization.  

In addition, The Women’s Bakery absorbs all the costs associated with the One Bread Project while generating little revenue from the program. While the One Bread Project initially provided bread to schools for free, about half of participants are now in a co-pay relationship with The Women’s Bakery with schools and parents covering some of the costs. The One Bread Project is at the mercy of donations. 

“I would like to partner with the United Nations or Rwanda’s Ministry of Education to subsidize the One Bread Project, so we can keep growing it without having to absorb all those costs in the business side of The Women’s Bakery,” Culver said. “If we get commercial viability, we can take this anywhere.” 

Kariuki has big dreams for the One Bread Project. In 2018, the One Bread Project was feeding 463 schoolchildren per day. In 2024, that number rose to more than 20,000. The Women’s Bakery has a goal of feeding 1 million children a day through the program in 10 years, but Kariuki wants the program to go beyond the Nutri Bun, the fortified bun the company developed to help meet Rwandan schoolchildren’s nutrition needs. Kariuki has considered creating a nutrition bar that can travel farther and has a longer shelf life than the Nutri Bun. 

A pathway to profitability

In its quest for commercial viability, The Women’s Bakery is looking for new streams of revenue. Capacity isn’t an issue. With the new equipment purchased and installed last year and its 60 employees, The Women’s Bakery has the labor needed to take on more customers, but it is looking to diversify the markets it is targeting. 

In 2023, The Women’s Bakery won the business of Rayon Sports, Rwanda’s national football club, which was looking for a bakery to supply products to its stadium. The Women’s Bakery developed three new products for the line: a hard roll, salt bread and sliced bread that will be sold under a co-brand, Gikundiro, produced by The Women’s Bakery. The products share the name Gikundiro with the national football team. The opportunity has provided an avenue for the women to learn new skills and bake new products. 

“Developing these new products brought on a new level of professionalism, and with more training, the quality of our products is improving,” Kariuki said. 

In addition to the partnership with Rayon Sports, The Women’s Bakery is looking to reopen its café and even enter the retail market. However, that will require more training and some much-needed equipment. 

“We need proofers to improve the quality and consistency of our products as we try to break into retail,” Kariuki explained. The bakeries currently proof product at ambient temperature in the bakeries, which is subject to the variability of the weather. 

Moving into the retail space, Kariuki would like to expand the product portfolio beyond the low-cost products into more high-margin bakery items so the company can reach consumers with more disposable income than their current customer base. This project, however, requires more continuous training for the employees. The Women’s Bakery previously worked with a master baker who helped trained the employees on new equipment and develop the Nutri Bun for the One Bread Project, but The Women’s Bakery currently does not have the funds to hire a technical expert full time. 

Channel expansion goes beyond simply retail, café and the private label partnership with Rayon Sport. The Women’s Bakery is exploring a micro franchise model, which would empower women to have their own sales outlets where they could sell products from The Women’s Bakery. 

“We can empower women with entrepreneurial skills, and that will lead to their financial empowerment,” Kariuki said. “We even have some women working in our bakeries now who are getting older who could transition to owning one of these retail outlets. These retail outlets could provide another path to prosperity.” 

Once the three rural bakeries reach capacity, Kariuki and Culver ponder what the next step will be. The two leaders of The Women’s Bakery are spending 2024 researching the possibility of a centralized production facility in an urban location that could support the growing commercial side of the business. This hub-and-spoke model could provide more efficiency and reduce costs. However, Kariuki said this is a more long-term goal, and she still has research to do to determine how such a model would fit in with The Women’s Bakery’s mission and resources.

In the meantime, The Women’s Bakery has immediate needs to be met: proofers for all three bakeries, new delivery trucks to replace the tri-motorbikes currently being used; more training for its employees; the funds to hire a local trainer; small bakery equipment and components such as cooling racks, backup power generators; and water chillers. Culver is also interested in finding resilient partners who are interested in supporting the One Bread Project.

“I am looking to raise a significant investment for The Women’s Bakery so we can focus on perfecting operations and planning for sustainable growth,” she said. “While The Women’s Bakery is certainly moving and grooving, we can’t move as quickly as we would like or pivot with agility because we don’t have the funding. Our current operating budget is $1.3 million, and that’s without any cushion to save. Another million would be great. Ten million dollars would be amazing.” 

Culver will be attending the American Society of Baking’s BakingTech conference, Feb. 27-29 in Chicago. She will be co-located with Sosland Publishing Co. at BakingTech’s Marketplace, Booth No. 500.