Kardo

1. TO: Independent coffee shop owners/baristas (Miera iela, Old Town, Āgenskalns) SUBJECT: Your pastry case has croissants. Nobody's has cardamom buns. I counted six coffee shops between Miera iela and Tērbatas last week — five had the same almond croissant from the same wholesale supplier. None had a cardamom bun. I'm opening Kardo, a Riga bakery that makes exactly one thing: cardamom buns, baked fresh each morning. No croissants, no muffins, no split attention — just the best version of one product. Want a free 6-pack dropped at your counter this week, no order required? Just reply with your address and a good delivery time. — Kardo 2. TO: Coworking space office managers SUBJECT: Friday snacks, ordered from the same three bakeries every week Most coworking spaces in Riga rotate between the same three pastry suppliers for the Friday spread — I checked five spaces this month and s…

Kardo is a tiny bakery in Riga that makes exactly one thing: fresh-baked cardamom buns, in the Nordic kardemummabullar style, baked in small batches every morning and sold until they run out. No croissants, no sandwiches, no seasonal menu drift — one recipe, done obsessively well, with cardamom sourced whole and ground in-house daily so the smell carries onto the street. The bun comes in one size and two standing variants: Classic (cardamom-cinnamon swirl with pearl sugar) and Kardo Dark (extra cardamom, muscovado sugar, flaky salt). The customer is the Riga commuter and remote-work coffee crowd, not the tourist trade — someone who walks past the same corner every weekday and wants a reliable 10 AM ritual. Primary target is the Miera iela / Brīvības iela creative-district foot traffic: young professionals, freelancers working from nearby cafes, and office workers on a coffee break. Secondary target is the 8-10 independent coffee shops in that same corridor (Rocket Bean Roastery, Kalve Coffee, and similar) who currently buy generic pastries from large wholesale bakeries and would upgrade to a single distinctive item they can put on their counter under their own branding. Revenue has three legs. First, walk-up retail from a single street-facing counter: one bun at €2.50, a bun-plus-coffee combo at €4.50, targeting 120-150 units/day once ramped, which is roughly €900-1,100/week from the counter alone. Second, wholesale to cafes: buns delivered fresh by 7:30 AM at a €1.60 wholesale price, targeting 5 cafes taking 20-30 buns/day each by month three — call it €650-950/week. Third, a weekly pre-order box (6 or 12 buns, ordered by Thursday for Friday pickup) for offices and households, at €2.30/bun, which smooths demand and lets Kardo bake to a known number instead of guessing. Concrete first steps, in order: (1) register as a SIA and get the food-handling and small-bakery permits from Riga's PVD, which realistically takes 2-3 weeks — start this today. (2) Lock a small production kitchen — either a shared commercial kitchen rental (there are a few in the Āgenskalns/Torņakalns area renting by the hour) or a lease on a 25-30m² unit on Miera iela with street frontage, since the counter and the kitchen should be the same address to avoid a second lease. (3) Lock cardamom and butter suppliers this week: whole green cardamom pods from a spice importer (not pre-ground — grind daily for the smell and the flavor difference is the entire point of the product) and a Latvian dairy for butter, since local butter quality is a genuine differentiator here. (4) Run two weekend pop-up stalls at Miera iela's existing weekend market before signing any lease, sell at €2.50/bun, and use sell-through-by-noon as the go/no-go signal before committing to a permanent counter. (5) Open an Instagram account today and post the first bake photos before the pop-up, since a single-product bakery lives or dies on whether the product looks unmistakable in a photo.