Mediterra Bakehouse
Mediterra Bakehouse operates a 40,000 square foot production facility, three cafés and a thriving wholesale operation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
Niko Ambeliotis (pictured, above) is Mediterra Bakehouse’s head of production and one of three siblings who manage the bakery, which was founded by their father Nick in 2002.
Niko says: “We use Cybake for entering all our orders. We use it a lot for pricing and costing out items, so that’s really been a big help for us, because, especially in the wholesale business, when you are selling a large quantity of something, you have to make sure you are making money on it. So that’s really helped us focus on what we should make product-wise, and I think it’s really helped us focus in on what our niche is.”
He says that Cybake has helped to underpin the bakery’s recent growth: “This is the first year we’ve had Cybake, but we’re already on track this year to grow 40%. So, our business is booming this year – it’s been off the charts – and it has been nice to have Cybake as a new element to our business because it is really one less thing we have to worry about.”
Cybake has also helped him deal with his own administrative workload.
“For me, personally, I handle all the numbers and running all the orders through the recipes and everything,” he says. “And, for example, before, when I would run the daily numbers, it would take me forty-five minutes and now it takes me five minutes. So, it has saved me a lot of time and I am able to focus that energy towards something else more productive.
“This year, we’re on track to be a lot busier. Just having that little bit of extra free time is huge for me because that [time]was just for figuring out what we needed to make and the recipes, not even to mention the scheduling and everything to do with production. So that has freed me up a huge amount and I’m very grateful to have Cybake on our team.”
Step up
The Pittsburgh native thinks that Cybake is a step up from what the bakery used before to run production.
He says: “We had another database that we used that was a lot simpler. I would basically just pull every product out of the production and enter it manually into a spreadsheet and then it would formulate the recipes. Now, I don’t even have to do that, I literally just pull out the CSV file.”
Niko says that Mediterra Bakehouse has managed to reduce the costs of labor by using Cybake.
“We’ve definitely utilized Cybake in that aspect. We have costed out all of items through Cybake and a part of that is also labor, so, I believe in the beginning or the end of last year, we reduced our labor in production by around five percent.”
Niko also explains how Cybake’s online ordering portal has saved Mediterra Bakehouse lots of time.
He says: “We had a lot of customers who asked us beforehand about ordering online by themselves, and that was something we weren’t really able to offer before Cybake.
“It’s been something that’s really helped us and been something that our customers are very happy with. It has made things a lot easier for them, it has made less work for us, so, yeah, it’s been great.”
Asked if Mediterra Bakehouse would recommend Cybake to other bakers, Niko says:
“I would definitely recommend Cybake to anyone who’s looking to grow their bakery. For us, it’s really helped us save time and focus our energies toward products we make the most profit on, basically what we’re the most efficient with, especially with the costing aspect, that’s really helped us. So yes, I would one hundred percent recommend Cybake.”
If you would like to find out more or see a demo of how Cybake can cut admin, improve efficiency, and improve sales in your bakery, contact us here, or use our LiveChat below.
Chris James is a communications specialist for Cybake and Cybake USA.
