# 'Laine's Bake Shop

An artisan baking manufacturing company with a social mission.

## Elevator pitch
Seventy percent of our business is wholesale to companies like Whole Foods and Starbucks. To meet existing surplus demand and take advantage of larger opportunities, we're moving into a production space that's three times larger, with an estimated maximum output of $4M. Our mission is to bring people together through authentic, good food as a way to revitalize urban communities, starting with the south side of Chicago. We specialize in scratch made, all-natural baked goods with unique flavors. 

- Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/lainesbakeshop
- Entity ID: wefunder:company:20060
- Last updated: 2026-06-14T05:02:29Z
- Generated at: 2026-06-14T09:45:14Z

## Quick facts
- Carried in all 54 Whole Foods in the Midwest Region, stores can select from 6 SKUs.
- Carried in 10 local Starbucks. 
- Retail bakery cafe location in Chicago's Pullman neighborhood to open September 2018. Monthly on site  pop up events leading up to grand opening. 
- Lease secured for new production facility in Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood, opens fall 2018.
- Alumni of the Good Food Business Accelerator at 1871 Tech Incubator in Chicago.
- Accepted into the Fall 2018 Cohort of the Inner City Capital Connections program. 

## FAQ
1. **With a huge national shift in focusing on healthy food and veganism. What are your plans on creating vegan options to consumers?**
   - Hi Aileen- Thank you for your question. Our products meet consumer demand for natural pastries and desserts on a broad level. We currently produce several vegan items, like our vegan apple crisp and vegan brownies. As demand continues to increase for vegan items, we will incorporate them in our offerings, while maintaining our holistic focus on delivering the tastiest, real food to our customers.
2. **Hi, usually when I invest I am content that I made a good choice, but this investment truly made me happy (and content that I made a good choice too!). Several questions: 1. Can you provide 2018 numbers for revenue, net income? 2. When you open the new production facility and ...**
   - Hi Alan, we are so happy to hear it! Here are the answers to your questions. 1) YTD Revenue through 6/30 is $83,433. We just onboarded a new CPA and virtual CFO service last week, so the latest net income information we have is YTD through 4/30. For that period revenue was $47,930 with a net income of $6,223. To provide an idea on momentum our February revenues were $10,431 and we ended June with $17,457. We will have complete May and June numbers within a few weeks. 2) We anticipate becoming...
3. **I went to your website and noticed there is not a large selection of food items offered there. Do you plan on expanding you online business with the creation of the new facility?**
   - Hi Andre, thanks for your question! Yes, we are planning to expand the online business once we have increased capacity. Our new retail manager starts in two weeks and will work with me to build the infrastructure to prepare for our online store expansion. There’s a lot of untapped potential for us to grow in that space.
4. **There is so much I love about your operation and business approach, but I have one nagging fear before investing: It seems that your revenue is heavily dependent on one customer (Whole Foods), and even your expansion plan for 2019 include expanded distribution through Whole Fo...**
   - Hi Thomas, thanks so much for your feedback and question! While we have a very solid relationship with Whole Foods, our revenue concentration in that account is one of the biggest risks that we are focused on actively mitigating. We actually have the opportunity to start the expansion process with Whole Foods now, but have held off on further expansion of SKUs or stores until we have diversified our revenue base. Our goal is to reduce our concentration to 20% in this account by the end of 201...
5. **Hi Rachel, I was going to ask the same question that Thomas asked, and he put it well. Your answer is excellent, though I am a little curious about why you would not do both - expand SKUs and stores with Whole Foods and also do all of that other expansion? Also a follow-up to ...**
   - Hi Alan, thanks for another great question! I do apologize for my delayed response. The beginning of July, was unexpectedly, one of our busiest periods ever. The past two weeks actually helps to illustrate my answer here. Through the first half of July, Whole Foods was over 85% of our revenues (this is higher than we normally see). The next step of growth with Whole Foods, would be to add another entire region. If we do this before building out our base, we could end up with 99% of our busine...

## Team
- Rebecca Cortes (Director of Retail Operations)
- Rachel E. Bernier-Green (Owner)
- Jaryd Bernier-Green (Co-Founder, Senior Business Development Manager)

## Q&A
- Q: Has anyone received a payment yet?
- Q: You need to put out updates more often even if its only to let investors know that you are still alive and kicking.
- Q: When will you begin to make quarterly payments to your Wefunder investors?
  - A: Hi Michael, have two separate close dates as we received/will receive the fund in tranches. Once the final tranche has closed (hopefully this month) we will update each group of investors on the repayment dates. In general, the repayment period starts 1 year after the disbursement. We will make quarterly repayments at that point.
- Q: How has this investment panned put for those who invested? Have they sent communication out regularly and me their financial obligations?
- Q: Hi just checking to see f I have earned any thing? Thank you
- Q: It would be great if we could get investor updates quarterly?  That doesn't seem like too much of an ask.  Having some more frequent content updates (at least monthly?) on some sort of social media platform (be it your website, yelp new photos, something) would be appreciated as well so that we could see some sort of additional tangible progress?  That could also be a source of free or cheap marketing to give you another channel besides word of mouth.
  - A: Hi Brian, thank you for this. I will send out a message this week that covers the date investors will receive their first repayment (just waiting on confirmation from WeFunder on the ETA for you all), the best ways to keep in touch across our various social media platforms and our email newsletter, as well as the launch of a quarterly virtual meeting to discuss business updates. That way we can discuss the important updates in a live meeting each quarter, and each investor can see updates on a weekly basis on our other channels.
- Q: Company website hasn't been updated in a year, no yelp postings in the last year, no Wefunder owner comments since May, and the first contractual payment is coming soon (after the goal post has already been moved once, as noted in previous comment).  I'm not having a good feeling about this everyone...
  - A: Hi Brian,I sincerely apologize for the actions on my end that have contributed to your unease. I fully take ownership of the fact that I need to be more active in updating our stakeholders. We have experienced significant growth this year, along with some growing pains. Ensuring that I addressed these issues, and made sure the company is on the path for continued growth next year has been my priority (albeit, not an excuse by any means to not ensure that our stakeholders are adequately informed).Our company website is being redone by an outside firm to relaunch in early November along with our app, however I will update that today as well. We’ve had customers post on our yelp page as recently as a few weeks ago and I have responded to the recent posts. We’re also active on our other social media channels with updates.The goal post wasn’t moved on our original payment schedule. There was an unfortunate issue in the WeFunder software, that did not include the dates in the investor contracts. As soon as I became aware of the issue, I elevated it to the WeFunder team to fix the bug and communicate with all investors as soon as possible.I am always happy to jump on a call with any of our investors to answer questions as well. Moving forward how frequently would you suggest I provide updates here? I was planning to make monthly updates during the repayment period which commences next month, but I am open to alternative update schedules.Other opportunities to stay connected include following our social media accounts and  signing up for our newsletter. I am bringing on additional support to ensure that our communication on these channels is also more consistent and strategic.Sincerely,Rachel
- Q: Hi Rachel.. Some updates regarding how the business is doing would be greatly appreciated.
  - A: Hi Viral, we are coming off a record breaking quarter and this month is already on track to be our best yet. The growth has stretched us, so I am behind on getting out a full investor update. I do apologize that it's taken so long to provide additional details. I am working to provide additional information this weekend.
- Q: Any updates yet on how the business is progressing with the investments ?
  - A: Hi Bruce, we are coming off a record breaking quarter and this month is already on track to be our best yet. The growth has stretched us, so I am behind on getting out a full investor update. I do apologize that it's taken so long to provide additional details. I am working to provide additional information this weekend.
- Q: Hi, usually when I invest I am content that I made a good choice, but this investment truly made me happy (and content that I made a good choice too!). Several questions: 1. Can you provide 2018 numbers for revenue, net income? 2. When you open the new production facility and hire new staff what will revenue need to grow to so you are cash flow positive? 3. Is there any detail you can give about feedback from current retail customers - what are they saying about how fast your product is selling, what customers are saying, and stuff like that? Thanks!
  - A: Hi Alan, we are so happy to hear it! Here are the answers to your questions. 1) YTD Revenue through 6/30 is $83,433. We just onboarded a new CPA and virtual CFO service last week, so the latest net income information we have is YTD through 4/30. For that period revenue was $47,930 with a net income of $6,223. To provide an idea on momentum our February revenues were $10,431 and we ended June with $17,457. We will have complete May and June numbers within a few weeks. 2) We anticipate becoming cash flow positive towards the end of Q2 2019 on monthly revenues of about $70,000 (~$30,000 from the retail kiosk opening 9/1, and the rest of the wholesale side). 3) While the specific comparables are confidential, I can share anecdotal evidence, as well as revenue trends (see chart on profile for Whole Foods trends). We once landed the opportunity to supply the Cavalia (traveling horse circus) show at Soldier Field for their entire time in Chicago because the production manager tasted our Red Velvet Cheesecake Brownie at Starbucks and called us immediately afterwards! I will check with the WeFunder team to see if there's a way that I can post photos of customer emails or social media messages with feedback. In the interim, our Google, Yelp, Facebook, and TheKnot.com pages contain some customer feedback.
- Q: Are you still in business? It's been 20 months since your last update to investors. You've only made four of eleven required revenue share loan payments. The last loan payment was for Q4 2020. I understand that covid made business difficult. However, if you are not able to make required payments to your lender-investors, at least do us the courtesy of communicating with us.
- Q: On May 7th, in response to my question of March 18 asking when you would begin making quarterly payments to Wefunder investors, you said "the repayment period starts 1 year after the disbursement." I made my investment partly on the basis of your July 17, 2018 answer in this forum (in response to an question by a different person), that "The payment date will be determined by the date that we close the loan. Once the loan closes, payments will be made on a quarterly basis, starting the first quarter after closing the loan." The first tranche of your Wefunder loans closed on September 25, 2018. The first quarter after that was October 1 - December 31, 2018. The Revenue Loan Agreement (para 3c) says payments will be made within thirty (30) days of the end of each Measurement Period. That would have been January 30. It's now eighteen weeks past January 30th. By the terms of your public promises to investors, those of us who funded the early tranche should have received two payments so far. It is not fair to change the terms of the deal after you have our money.
  - A: Hi Michael- I sincerely apologize for the confusion. I did answer the question incorrectly last summer and the WeFunder team pointed out my error and let me know that they addressed it with the person who asked the question. In retrospect, it would have been prudent to make a public comment to address that statement since it was in conflict with the language in the Revenue Loan Agreement. We have not changed the terms of our agreement, nor do we have any legal ability to do so in the future. The Revenue Loan Agreement states that the repayment period commences one year after the closing date. Our first payments are due in January of 2020. Please let me know if you have any further questions.I am also working on an update to all investors regarding repayment schedules, forthcoming perks fulfillment, and our financial performance so far since our first annual report is not due until next year. Thank you, 
- Q: Tax forms
  - A: Hi Tresa, Just to confirm, there were no tax forms for this year. Investors will receive tax forms when repayment commences.
- Q: This is where you got me: "Laines Bake Shop has two nonprofit partners who help individuals who were previously homeless, incarcerated, or had substance abuse problems learn job skills. We often hire from the program after graduation. We also have a revenue sharing program set up with local nonprofits working to address the underlying issues of crime and violence in Chicago." I hope your business exceeds all expectations! Aloha, Mary
  - A: We have exciting news to share on this front Mary! We now have three nonprofit partners that we hire from and our apprenticeship program is stronger than ever. We will share stories of the impact that we are making soon.
- Q: Are you still raising funds?