Sandy’s Donuts halves retail waste and takes wholesale orders online
Sandy’s Donuts in Fargo, North Dakota, was established in 1983 by Sandy Ostlund and his wife Donna. The business was taken over by their son Mark and then his son, Jeff Ostlund (pictured, left), became the current CEO in 2019.
The company’s management team first encountered our software at the IBIE trade show in Las Vegas in 2022. As operations manager, Kent Flagtwet (pictured, right) puts it: “They kind of fell in love with Cybake.”
Sandy’s Donuts operates three retail locations in Fargo and West Fargo plus a thriving wholesale business. The company adopted Cybake in 2023 and uses it to take its wholesale orders, manage its production and deliveries, and to forecast demand in its stores.
It produces over 10,000 donuts a day in a 2,000 square feet bakery in two main waves.
Kent Flagtwet explains: “We begin donut production at 8:00 am. We operate until 9:00 pm, on average, finishing with packing. Our wholesale manager, Joan Wilson (pictured, center), processes the orders twice a day. The first orders are processed at 8:00 am from Cybake for our bakery production needs. That includes reports for dough mixing, cake batter, frosted, dipped, filled and glazing donut counts.
“At 1:30 pm, when the shops close, Joan will process the second wave of orders that have come in after the 8:00 am. The orders come in through walk in, website and phone orders. The second set of production reports are processed to reflect the additional orders. Joan will also produce packing and delivery notes for the shops, wholesale and corporate accounts.”
Improved availability
Kent confirms that since Sandy’s Donuts started using Cybake’s sales-based shop ordering (SBO) module, the business has improved product availability and gained far more control over waste in its retail stores.
Cybake’s shop ordering module analyzes historical sales data from POS tills and/or calculated sales figures and then suggests what stock each shop will need each day. By predicting customer demand more correctly, sales are therefore optimized.
Kent says: “Our shops operate from 6:00 am to 1:30 pm. At times, we have either sold out too early or had excess donuts at the end of the day. The goal is to have a few donut selections remaining at 1:30 pm. We have improved upon that goal since using Cybake.
“Waste reduction was a main goal when implementing Cybake. Before Cybake, our average waste was running near 10%. After a few months of running SBO in Cybake, our waste has been reduced to 5%.”
Sandy’s Donuts CEO, Jeff Ostlund adds: “We cut waste in half. That’s over a hundred thousand dollars in savings. In some of my very first conversations with Cybake, they were saying that we can probably save about forty thousand dollars a year. I feel like we could save a lot more than that. So, it will be exciting to see. Forty thousand dollars is great, but a one hundred thousand dollars is better.”
“Also, we will have more sales because obviously the goal is to not sell out, but also not have too much waste. You can find that sweet spot. You can lose a lot less money and make a lot more money. So that’s really exciting. The customers are a lot happier when you have at least a few donuts left at the end of the day.”
On the wholesale side of the business, Sandy’s Donuts delivers mostly to local convenience stores in Fargo and surrounding towns within a wide, 100-mile radius.
The company uses Cybake’s online ordering module, aka Cybake Shop, to take its wholesale orders. There is also an option for retail customers to place an order to pick up at the Sandy’s Donuts stockist of their choice.
With Cybake’s online ordering module, hours spent rectifying errors are all cut. Orders are more accurate, meaning less waste and there is no need to rekey any data as they go straight to production.
Customized product list
Each wholesale customer sees their own customized product list, with pictures, which tells them what items they have on standing order, what they have ordered before, when they ordered it and more.
Kent says: “Our wholesale customers can place or change their daily or weekly order online rather than calling Joan. Our customers have control of their orders and are more self-sufficient. Having access to their own invoices is an added benefit.”
“I’ll give you a good example,” he says. “We met with a wholesale client to introduce Cybake Shop in a smaller town, outside of Fargo, and they were having a big regional community rummage sale. The manager commented that the timing was perfect because she was figuring quantity and donut selections for the event.”
“She increased her order using Cybake Shop due to the anticipated additional traffic the event created. This fell right into place. Perfect timing.”
Kent also says that the Cybake implementations team and customer support experience has been second to none, giving out a couple of special mentions to members of the team.
He says: “Personally, I have gone through many software systems and implementations, and I’ll be real honest: Kelly Tyson is by far the best I’ve ever worked with in twenty-five years.
“She is just fantastic. She listened to our needs. She adapted Cybake to meet them. We’ve added some special requests that we didn’t think that she could accommodate and, between her and Richard Browning, they figured it out. As far as that goes, I can’t praise Kelly or the Cybake team enough.”
Want to find out how predictive ordering for your shops or online orders for your wholesale operation could benefit your bakery? Why not request a demo?
Chris James is a communications specialist for Cybake and Cybake USA.
