Andrew and Alix knew they wanted to be business owners, but they never thought that would lead to purchasing a five-generation, commercial bakery in their 20s.
Learn how they jumped directly into the adventure of ownership and the unique advantages they found when purchasing an existing business.
Who are you and what business did you start?
Hello! I’m Andrew Ambriz. My wife, Alix, and I are the owners of Sehnerts Bakery and Cafe in McCook, Nebraska.
Sehnerts is a 65-year-old commercial bakery and restaurant. My wife and I purchased the bakery about two years ago, and it’s our first big step into entrepreneurship. We were the first non-family owners in the company’s history.
We operate several lines of revenue under our roof.
At our core, we are a retail bakery. We make fresh donuts every morning, bake our own bread, and produce classic bakery products.
We also operate a breakfast and lunch restaurant, using all self-made products. Additionally, we have a catering service and a large wholesale pizza crust business, shipping all over the nation.
I’m proud to say in the last year we eclipsed 1.2 million in revenue.
What was your background? How did you come up with the idea?
My college degree is in Animal and Meat Science, which funny enough is not very applicable to my current life!
In my last year of college, I took an internship with Rural Futures, a local Nebraska economic development organization. I ended up being placed in McCook, Nebraska (which is where our business is today). I worked in the local economic and community development office for a summer. McCook is a small town, about 7,000 people live here.
That internship was a pivot point in my career. Instead of continuing in science, I was really drawn to the field of community and economic development.
When I graduated, I started a career as an economic developer. I was the Executive Director for Community and Economic Development for two different Nebraska communities over the next five years.
In that role, I got to learn from some wonderful business leaders and community partners.
I worked on projects like housing development and new businesses. I had many experiences of working alongside people who were trying to start their own businesses or purchase an existing business.
Two business leaders made a unique impact on me – Perry Myers with Myers Construction, and Don Cantrell, from Cantrell Farms.
Post-COVID Workforce
At the time, our local community was experiencing the strain of post-COVID, and businesses all over the place were short of labor. However, these two businesses seemed to handle this issue much better than their counterparts. They didn’t complain about a lack of workforce – they seemed to be having thriving places of work.
Both of these companies had created a culture of really committed employees. They had created a place where employees were treating it like their own business, and some of them working in the business for over 20 years.
These guys were outliers, and they made me ask, ‘Why?’
‘Why don’t they complain like everyone else?’
The thoughts continued to my career and the ‘chair’ that I was sitting in.
I didn’t know if being an economic director was necessarily the best way for me to do economic development. I still wanted to be in economic development, but I wanted to get closer.
I wondered if I could create what I had witnessed from Perry Myers and Don Cantrell.
That gave way to a few conversations with my wife. I asked her, ‘What if we jumped into business?’
We started looking. We looked at a coffee shop that was for sale in Broken Bow, Nebraska, but it wasn’t quite the fit. Time went by, and just kinda kept this thought in our back pocket.
“So, are you ready”
A little while later, I got a message from Matt Shenert. I remember it was on a Tuesday evening at 8:30 pm. I had known Matt from my time working in McCook.
He sent me a message: “Are you ready to quit your 9-5 and start your entrepreneurial journey.”
I brushed it off, ‘Yeah, sure Matt.’ I told him to send me his best sales pitch, not really taking it seriously.
45 Minutes later I had three long messages from Matt with all the reasons that I should buy his family’s business – Sehnerts Bakery.
I remember thinking – you are really hamming this up, Matt.
I knew the Sehnerts Company well from my time as an intern in McCook. This was a 65-year-old business that had been in the same family its entire history – it didn’t even seem real to me. Can we even do it if we aren’t family?
36 hours go by, and I remember sitting at lunch and thinking, maybe this isn’t crazy.
I ran it by Alix – she was initially angry that I had taken so long to tell her about it. After she cooled off, she decided we better get some more information. So, we schedule a phone call with Matt and Shelly.
Don’t buy this business.
That two-hour phone call led to a 48-hour in-person stealth visit. We snuck into McCook, not telling anyone why we were back visiting.
That weekend Matt, and his wife Shelly, did everything they could to convince us that buying the business was a bad idea.
He didn’t sugarcoat anything. He told us all the headaches and horror stories – at one point he was on his knees in his living room reenacting a total breakdown that one employee had over some spilled ingredients.
After the dramatic scene, he got up and asked, ‘So what do you think?’
I looked at Alix, and I said, “We’re going to buy this (expletive) bakery, aren’t we?” Alix grinned and Shelly laughed. And I’m thinking: alright, now how do we actually make this work?
What were your first steps to purchasing the business?
The next six months were the fastest months of my life.
Every evening, Alix and I would sit down and make plans – what’s the next thing we need to figure out? We even recorded some of our conversations on long car rides so we could remember our process and the ideas we had.
By the virtue of work that I had done in my economic development role, I knew how to do business planning and financial projections. So that was the first thing I focused on.
As I was doing this, Alix was helping me envision what we wanted to do with the business. She was asking things like, what changes might we make? What things are good? What do we want to do in the space?
Dear Matt
The funny thing was that Matt and I are actually pretty kindred spirits.
We used to send long hand-written letters to each other as our form of communication. It was our running list of updates to each other during the process.
The first one was, “Letter to Matt, Number 1”
Matt and I would just go back and forth sharing what was on our minds and updating needed information. He’d send me some financial information and say, ‘Here are some things to look for,’ and I’d come back with questions and it helped me understand the structure of the business and who the key players were.
By the time we got close to formalizing the deal, it felt like it was two friends who were trying to figure it out together.
I got a purchase price pretty early from Matt, and he had recently done a 3rd party business evaluation, so most of his numbers were current.
The next question was, how can we come up with the money? How can we structure a deal?
No question left unturned
It was at this point that I got really good at asking for help.
I spent a lot of time on the phone with people figuring out the regulatory processes in food and beverage, and then learning the process of purchasing ownership of an existing business.
I enlisted the local help of our Nebraska Business Development Office and they were really great.
There was no question I wasn’t willing to ask or look stupid asking about. I did often feel very dumb asking some basic questions, but I found that everyone was very charitable and grateful in the process.
Most people preferred that I asked a lot of questions – it’s when new entrepreneurs don’t ask questions and assume things that they get into trouble. It takes much longer to fix something you did wrong than to ask for help ahead of time.
We were also fortunate to get assistance from some USDA programs to help with payments early on – learning about available programs helped get us to a place where we could make a deal happen.
The passing of the dough roller
We made an offer, got a purchase agreement, had both sets of lawyers look at it, and it brought us up to the purchase date.
During the six months of this taking place, I was working my full-time job and we had two kids at home. We also had to sell our house, pack, and find a new home in McCook. It was busy.
When the deal was finalized, we coordinated with Matt and Shelly to have a soft rollout of the transition.
We invited a few of our close friends, Matt and Shelly invited a few of theirs, and we gathered at the bakery one late night in July.
It was there that Matt and Shelly announced for the first time publicly that they had sold the business. They ceremoniously walked a rolling pin over to Alix and me, signifying the passing of ownership. It was a cool moment.
Staff Announcement
The next day we announced to staff. This was something we needed to be cautious about.
Matt stayed on for a while in the transition process, greased some of the wheels, and helped build our own personal relationships with the existing staff.
None of them left in the business during this time, and that was a huge blessing.
How did you go about validating the business? How did you know it was worth purchasing?
I’ve got tons of thoughts about this.
In terms of business validation, buying an existing business takes much of the guesswork out of it. The longer the business has been going, the more viable it must be – even if it’s not “printing money”, it provides enough to keep its employees and owner living their lives.
From there, like any business, it moves to the math problems.
Asking for as many recent years’ P&Ls, cash flows, and tax info as you can. Putting them together tells the whole story.
How much profit can it produce?
How much of that profit went back into the business?
What wages are currently paid to employees and the owner?
Can it support the debt service that would be required to purchase the business?
What were some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned along the pathway of building? What would you tell new business builders?
First year: Learn
When you purchase a business, you have to be a student first.
For the first year, I just felt like I was watching the business happen. It was a feeling of fumbling through it; it didn’t feel like I owned or was running this business.
My greatest achievement each day was just not to be a liability. Wherever I was stepping into, I was green and asking a lot of questions.
I was focusing both on the big picture – why we did things certain ways – and also just learning the work. I would step in on the sandwich bar, help cover a shift, learning the intricacy of the bakery and how this business, (that we now owned) operated and worked.
Somedays I was left questioning myself. I mean, we purchased a business that has 65 years of history behind it? Who am I? Who do I think I’m kidding with trying to do this?
But after six months, our team started to make progress, and it felt like we made some strides.
A big part of my role was learning how to connect with staff and understanding where they fit best. Who prefers this? Who prefers to do this thing?
And learning a lot more about structure. Our team has adapted the EOS Model and we were able to reorganize ourselves to be more effective and be more transparent with staff. We want to have more people feel like they are on the bus, and not just be a keeper of the keys.
Year one was mostly my education and learning how to run the business. After that first year, we felt like we finally got to a launch point where we could now do it our way.
Just because you can doesn’t mean that you should.
A year into business, Alix and I decided to open a short-service evening restaurant in the bakery called 310 Social. The concept was for sharable Spanish-style tapas appetizers and cool craft drinks.
It started great and was a hit in the community during the summer.
When school started back up, we started running into issues. Part of the reason it worked well in the summer was that we had plenty of help from high schoolers to work as staff. When they went back to school, we had trouble finding enough people.
We were maxing out our staff, who were already running a breakfast and lunch restaurant.
This was something new we wanted to do, and it was a wonderful way to fire a cannonball, and we learned from it.
In hindsight, we should have fired a few more bullets before we dove all in.
There were a few tense moments of, ‘Should we keep doing this?’ And it ended up being a month-long battle between the staff to decide if we should give it more time or pull the plug.
Yeah, it’s tough to make those decisions. But when you do, you kick pride to the curb. Because it’s going to humble you – it’s a hard lesson to learn that you aren’t as smart as you think you are.
What does your business do uniquely in the market? How did you grow?
Can’t beat our donuts
We had a group in from Florida the other day. One of them comes up to me and says, “My buddy just told me these are the best donuts he’s ever had.”
We’ve honed in on donuts – we think we have the best donuts in the region. It’s a donut recipe that has hardly changed from the beginning of the bakery and it’s damn good. A big part of what makes it special is our flour. It’s from a small mill in Hudson, Kansas. They source all their wheat locally, so we know we are getting a truly locally-made product.
So, we are working on scaling that, and the other parts of our business. We are a Mainstreet business, but we aren’t thinking like it. Food is hard to scale, but we are confident that we can grow.
Confidence in our team
A big differentiator for us is how confident we are in our staff. We’ve reorganized, and now have three supervisors in the business – each in charge of a key area of revenue for the bakery. We have a high level of trust and confidence in each person to grow that area of business.
We have confidence in all of our employees, from the general manager to the front line. Alix and I can be away and know that our customers are getting the same experience.
I still haven’t found a donut in our state that’s as good as ours – we are coming for the best donut in the nation next.
Did you ever have any, Oh Crap, Moments? When you thought the business wasn’t going to make it?
2023 was super stressful. We made the major decision to purchase the building we are in. We initially purchased just the bakery business and had a lease agreement for the use of the building.
The next big step was the purchase of the building. And it took quite a bit of capital out of our cash flow to finance the down payment.
The timing was interesting. At the time we were living on the fat of the land. We didn’t quite understand the cash flow implications of a big purchase like that. It was nothing we had ever waded into.
Purchasing a building looked like a really good idea in November/December.
Here’s a fun fact – people don’t buy very many donuts in the months that start with J.
January – New Year’s resolutions normally don’t include eating more donuts.
June and July – You are working on your beach bod, and don’t want to eat donuts.
When sales slowed in those months, money got tied up, and it put us close to the edge. We got really good at understanding what we did, how to manage orders, how to make sure we weren’t being superfluous with our inventory, and just generally stepping up our game. We had daily conversations about where we were at, and it was a stressful time.
We got through it, are better for it, and are confident and ready for 2024.
When you reflect on building your enterprise, how has it changed your life? Positive or negative?
It’s been positive, in every sense of the word.
We have a customer, Randy Longmecker. Randy pulled me aside one day, and he said “Brother, I gotta tell ya. I got a message from our Lord this morning. He said to tell you, this business is going to forge you as through fire.”
Randy didn’t offer anything more for me. He didn’t clarify. There’s no message from God that I could ascertain.
But I have felt the fire, two and a half years of it.
This is hard.
It is difficult.
It’s not black and white. There is no book. There is no video. There is no handbook. There are no answers that are going to make it any easier. There’re only you and the people you put around you.
And there are many other things and responsibilities that I have in my life in addition to this.
I ask myself, “How am I letting what is happening down at the bakery affect me? How does it affect how I show up as a husband, brother, father, and member of the community?”
All of those responsibilities get intermingled.
Sometimes it can feel like a pressure cooker of emotions.
Sometimes you can experience every emotion by lunchtime as a business owner. You can cry, you can laugh, you can be sad, or joyous to the point of tears – it can be exhausting.
But it’s so rewarding.
It’s like coming to the end of a marathon, and feeling the satisfaction of, “I did it.”
Running a business is hard. It’s hard. It’s hard. It’s hard.
But I’m saying that with a smile on my face because I know how happy it makes me. I am so happy to see customers who appreciate what we do. To see employees who love where they are. And my family that gets to enjoy and share in what we are doing.
This has been like nothing I’ve ever felt or experienced in life, and I find myself getting to share what we do with so many. It’s just a real treat that we landed where we are.
What are some of your favorite books, classes, or resources that have helped you?
- Never Split the Difference, Chris Voss. I use it every day as a means of communicating and getting more than just surface-level details from people in conversation and in negotiations.
- Great by Choice, Jim Collins. Incredible and usable concepts. Can’t say enough about it.
- Unreasonable Hospitality, Will Guidara. A new one we just finished. Our retail supervisor loved it.
- Currently reading the Business Valuation Bluebook by Chad Simmons. Older but all the concepts are still relevant. A great step forward after being in business for nearly three years and beginning to understand leverage, building value, and growth.
- Odee Ingersoll at Nebraska Business Development Center did a business valuation for the previous owner. This valuation served as the basis for where we started negotiations. He’s a wizard and I’d highly recommend having a business valuation done for objectivity if looking to sell your business.
- There’s one quote from my friend Barry Fox that I don’t think made it into our last conversation, I heard it from him recently – “All models are wrong, some are useful”. I take that and apply it to every book, resource, and in-between.
Where can we learn more about your business?
Sehnerts Bakery & Bieroc Cafe Website
Story about Andrew and Alix purchasing the Bakery
Lesson Breakdown
1. It’ll take time.
Even though Andrew and Alix bought an active, revenue-generating, business, it took nearly a year of learning before they started to truly understand the business. Starting or purchasing a business is like entering into a new game and arena you have to learn. It’s not something you can just read or cram as if you were taking a high school chemistry test. Learning only comes from being in it every day.
Be patient, good things take time.
2. Don’t be afraid to ask the ‘dumb’ question.
Purchasing a business is no small endeavor, and the Ambriz’s didn’t take it lightly. Andrew was really good at seeking help and setting aside his ego while doing it. He wasn’t trying to come across as someone he wasn’t – he was just on a search for answers.
Don’t be afraid to ask. It’s a much easier journey with help from others.
3. A business is a way to pursue the best version of yourself.
Andrew didn’t expect it when he bought the business, but he’s found the previous years of entrepreneurship to be a crucible of personal development. Echoed by many of the business owners in Humble Starts, running an enterprise has a way of making you better. It makes you a better leader, planner, strategist, and communicator. It reveals the parts of you that require growth, and if you have the right mindset – you’ll level up. And especially in ways that a 9-5 cannot provide to you. Andrew has found that it makes him a better dad, husband, leader, and community member.
There are many reasons to start or purchase a business, if you are interested in personal development – this is a great avenue for growth.
