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Feb 20, 2025 • 3 min read

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Client Story: From Code to Crust - How a Former Software Engineer Built His Dream Bakery

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After 22 years of working as a software engineer and a previous career as a geologist, Martin Naish embarked on an unexpected journey in 2021. Instead of settling into a traditional retirement, he decided to transform his three-decade-long passion for breadmaking into a thriving bakery business, Solaris Bakehouse.

From Family Tradition to Profession

Martin’s breadmaking story began as a family activity. The turning point came in 2017 when Mаrtin found an advert in the local paper for a baker who was giving bread classes. Before opening his bakery, he attended numerous bread workshops to perfect his craft. His motivation wasn’t just personal satisfaction. 

“I wanted to make bread that you might find on the continent, where it’s actually made by local people and people who actually have some pride in what they make.”

Building a Dream from the Ground Up

The physical transformation of Martin’s bakery space tells its own story of determination. He demolished an old double garage and turned it into his dream physical space thanks to a builder friend. The launch of the bakery in March 2024 was met with unprecedented enthusiasm. The marketing strategy was beautifully simple. Martin’s daughter who is an artist designed the logo and the marketing materials. They put the information around the nearest streets and the response was immediate and overwhelming. 

“The next day I had lots of people knocking on my door saying when is the bakery going to open? It was quite amazing. It was like an avalanche. And it’s been busy ever since.”

Innovation in Traditional Baking

Using his unique tech-savvy mindset, the secret of Martin’s bakery lies in its innovative bake-and-demand model, which calls for a robust online presence. On Solaris Bakehouse‘s website, Martin puts up a selection of different breads each week and local people decide what they want and pay for it online. This upfront payment system helps him know exactly how much pre-ferment and dough to make, resulting in very little wastage.

Although Martin had worked as a software engineer for over 20 years, he hadn’t been involved with web design or website building at all. Realizing the learning curve for WordPress would delay his business launch, he made the strategic decision to hire a web development agency.

Choosing the Right Hosting Foundation

When it came to choosing a hosting provider for his new website, Martin researched different options and compared hosting providers. After reviewing multiple comparison sites, SiteGround stood out with its high ratings. The choice proved to be the right one for his business, as the service has provided consistent reliability since day one.

“SiteGround is very reliable, it’s very fast and the security looks good to me. I get performance reports every month and daily backups which is essential in case something goes wrong. So all those things combined I think that that’s given me a very good service.”

As someone who spent over two decades in the technology industry, Martin knows the critical importance of cybersecurity. That’s why he relies on SiteGround’s Site Scanner to protect his online presence, letting him focus on perfecting his sourdough while his website stays protected against any digital threats.

“The Site Scanner captures a lot of malicious input. I get SiteGround’s monthly security reports and they show me how many malicious attacks had been stopped. Why someone would want to attack a small bakery, I don’t know, but I’m glad that thanks to SiteGround they didn’t get to crash my site or steal customer information.”

A Different Kind of Success Story

Martin’s approach to business success is refreshingly honest.

 “It’s a retirement project, even though I work at it three, four days a week. I don’t rely on it for income. I’m happy if my business pays for itself, covers expenses, and a little bit more.”

His advice for others considering a similar journey is practical and thoughtful:

 “If you’re going to start from scratch, I think you need to do a lot of research. Look for websites that are offering a similar service to what you want to do and try and glean ideas from them. See what facilities they offer and consider whether that’s something you want to add to your website.”

Martin’s bakery success has exceeded expectations and he nearly completes sellouts most weeks. While he keeps his operation intentionally small-scale, he’s expanded into offering breadmaking workshops, sharing his passion with others who want to learn the craft.

What started as a retirement hobby has blossomed into something truly special: a successful small business that brings joy to his neighborhood, one loaf at a time. Martin’s journey from software engineer to baker shows that with passion, planning, and the right hosting partner, you can turn your dream into reality at any stage of life.

Ready to bake up your own success story? 

Svetoslava Ivanova

Digital Marketer

Enthusiastic about adopting new ways of storytelling Gen Z-er who lives and breathes digital marketing.

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