Watch: Manresa Bread builds strong foundation for growth with Cybake
Founded by owner and baker Avery Ruzicka, Manresa Bread has grown from a local farmers’ market venture to a multi-location retailer and wholesaler in Silicon Valley, California.
The company operates bakery cafés in Los Gatos, Campbell, Palo Alto, Los Altos and Santa Cruz. An 18,000 square foot site in Cambell acts as its main commissary, and its growing wholesale business has over 50 customers.
Before launching Manresa Bread, Avery developed the bread programme at Manresa, a three-Michelin-star restaurant in Los Gatos. Encouraged by the response from customers, she began selling bread at local farmers’ markets in 2013, building a following that would eventually lead to the creation of Manresa Bread.
“We realised there was a real opportunity for sourdough, naturally leavened breads in the area,” she says.
Today, Manresa Bread mills its own flour and produces a range of artisan products, including sourdoughs, croissants, Danish pastries and kouign-amann. The bakery continues to focus on seasonal ingredients, traditional baking methods and freshly milled flour across its product range.
Scaling
Growth was always part of the plan, says Avery: “Since day one, Manresa Bread has been a scaling business. Continued growth is definitely in our DNA.”
As the company expanded, Avery knew the systems supporting the bakery would need to grow too. By 2022, with multiple retail locations, a busy wholesale operation and a growing team, Manresa Bread began looking for a bakery management system that could support whatever came next.
“We weren’t familiar with any of the systems, so we really had to do our own legwork. That’s how we came upon Cybake,” she explains.
What appealed to Avery wasn’t simply what Cybake could do at the time. It was the confidence that the system could continue to support the business as it evolved.
She says: “When you’re growing, especially when you’re growing in directions that you didn’t fully anticipate, there’s going to be a lot of parts of that journey you’re not going to see ahead of time. As those needs emerge, we can see that Cybake offers the tools and functionality to support them.”
Today, Cybake sits at the centre of the bakery’s day-to-day operations. Running through the areas Cybake manages, Avery lists: “All of our recipes, day-to-day pastry production recipes, day-to-day bread production recipes, food cost management, and also reconciling invoices with the delivery team so they can be exported directly to customers based on how they want to receive them. Some customers want invoices daily, some want them weekly, but all of that is happening in Cybake.”
As the business grew, Avery wanted to ensure that information was accessible throughout the company rather than relying on a handful of key people.
“If you are the only person, or one or two people are the only key holders, that’s fine when you’re a certain size,” she says.
“But when you’re five-plus retail stores, 50 wholesale customers and more than 100 employees, you need people to be able to get data, answer their questions and make sure everybody is working from the same information.”
That visibility has helped remove delays and given teams more independence in their day-to-day work.
“To get to this place where no one is a roadblock to the day-to-day operations because of everyone’s ability to access Cybake, is exactly where we hoped we would be.”
Growth
The impact has been especially noticeable during a period of significant growth.
“I’ve also had the greatest growth in wholesale that we’ve ever seen. Because of Cybake, my teams are able to operate themselves, maintain their day-to-day operations and rise to the occasion of that growth without me doing anything at all.”
For Avery, one of the biggest benefits is the confidence that comes from knowing her team is working from accurate information.
“The best part of Cybake for me is a real peace of mind that the information my team is using to make every decision and move through their day is accurate,” she says.
“When we finally got ourselves fully integrated into Cybake, the energy spent trying to make sure everybody had what they needed was suddenly mine again to utilise for whatever comes next.”
Instead of spending time answering operational questions, Avery can focus on the parts of the business that inspired her to start baking in the first place.
“It frees us up to worry about things like fermentation, sourcing ingredients, working on new stores and working on new menu items. It’s a great tool and a partner for both me as a business owner and my team in their day-to-day responsibilities.”
When asked whether she would recommend Cybake to other bakeries, Avery’s answer is clear.
“I would strongly recommend Cybake. I have strongly recommended Cybake to both large and small bakeries. For bakeries that are retail-focused and for bakeries that are wholesale-focused, the value of Cybake is significant.
“You are only as good as your recipes and your systems, and Cybake creates that foundation. Anyone in the company that you choose to give access to can access the information they need to have really positive impact on your business and your bakery.”
Want to find out more about how Cybake can automate your bakery’s admin and give you the confidence to scale? Get in touch for a chat and a demo!
Catherine Thomas is the digital marketing executive at Cybake.
