In its eighth year, National Bakery Day is set to take place on Friday, September 20. The Retail Bakers of America (RBA) invites business owners to celebrate the success of their independent bakery with this sweet holiday.

You can bring National Bakery Day to life through live events, fresh treats and signature tastes that make your local bakery a vital part of your community.

“National Bakery Day is a day to celebrate retail bakeries as an important part of the community fabric,” says Marissa Sertich Velie, executive director of the Retail Bakers of America. “It provides bakeries with the opportunity to build relationships within local communities, but it also unites the national retail baking community, fostering a sense of unity.”

The first step in preparing for the holiday is to market it to your customers ahead of time. Give them plenty of notice of your upcoming events and deals, specifically with signage. By joining the RBA, your bakery will receive a free marketing kit for National Bakery Day. The kit will be sent to your bakery and will include marketing materials for you to use as well as a how-to guide.

Source: Retail Bakers of America (RBA)

You and your staff can dress for the occasion. The RBA offers a collection of t-shirts featuring exclusive designs celebrating National Bakery Day. The National Bakery Day store is now open, with all items printed on demand.

Freebies and special deals on products have been a big way that bakeries have encouraged visitors on that day. Last year, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s Pastries A-La-Carte invited customers to stop by the bakery for a free chocolate chip or snickerdoodle cookie, while Sweet Arts Bakery in Geneseo, New York gave away free mini cinnamon rolls.

LadyCakes Bakery in Cape Coral, Florida ran specials all month long in the lead-up to National Bakery Day. This included discounts on custom orders, assorted cookies and wedding cake orders. Additionally, customers had the chance to win free cupcakes for a year. Each purchase throughout September earned them an entry into the giveaway, with the winner receiving a dozen cupcakes weekly for a year.

Contests are another fun way to bring in customers. LadyCakes Bakery also hosted a cupcake flavor contest last year, in which customers could submit their dream cupcake flavor, with the best creation to be featured at the bakery during the week of Thanksgiving.

Some additional ways to bring this special event to life include bakery tours, decorating stations for the kids, collaborating with other local businesses and involving your local chamber of commerce/asking local officials to declare 9/20/24 National Bakery Day in your area.

“RBA Members have become really creative with National Bakery Day promotions,” Velie says. “Special giveaways of merchandise, raffles for special private tours or special bakery products, and price rollbacks are a few ideas that some of our members have used to drive traffic to their stores. We also encourage bakeries to post on social media leading up to National Bakery Day and tag @retailbakersofamerica so that we can help spread the love!”