‘Tis The Season To Be Ready
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. But the holiday season can also be the most stressful time for bakers.
That’s because the time between Halloween and New Year’s Eve is among our busiest. Packed with special orders and increased foot traffic, some retail bakeries extend their hours during these rush periods to accommodate an influx of customers. Similarly, wholesale bakers feel the heat from a big increase in orders created by parties and other events.
Don’t get me wrong, these are great problems to have. But I know some of you will already be gritting your teeth as you brace yourselves for yet another year of holiday season chaos.
The good news is that you still have time to get your business better organized before the onslaught starts by thinking about implementing bakery management software now.
Having a system that handles your admin jobs and gives everybody throughout your operation one clear and consistent version of the truth will bring its own obvious rewards. But the forthcoming holidays bring some capabilities of bakery management software into particularly sharp focus.
In Cybake’s case, for example, you can easily keep record of holiday orders and ditch the manual process with our special orders functions. You can also keep track of orders that were taken from previous seasons, giving you a clear visual of yearly trends.
Pricing
Similarly, our purchasing module allows you to keep track of supplier pricing and ensures that what you ordered is what arrives in your store. This is especially important during your busiest time of the year. Who wants the added stress of being short on ingredients or surprised by new pricing from their vendors?
Recipe management is another feature that offers a noticeable benefit around this time of year. Knowing how to cost out seasonal items properly can make the difference between making good profits or just breaking even. Cybake’s recipe management module gives you a tight grip on your total food cost, including labor and overheads.
For wholesalers, setting up standing orders within Cybake takes some of the load off your admin by allowing your customers to be on repeated and scheduled ordering process. This reduces the need to ring up customer after customer to take their order. With our system, it’s seamless and automatic.
There’s also the option to use Cybake’s online ordering feature. This gives each of your wholesale customers their own customized product list to order from. It also tells them what items they have on standing order, what they have ordered before, and when they ordered it.
So, if you have just an ounce of curiosity about transitioning from frustrating paper-based processes or outdated computer programs, the time to satisfy it is now, before the winter holiday season starts. And if, during your research, you find that Cybake fits your needs, we can have you up and running faster than you can say Jack-o’-lantern.
If you would like to get your bakery all set for the holiday season with Cybake, please get in touch on our contact page, via the webchat below, by emailing us, or by calling us on the numbers listed at the bottom of this page.
More by this author
Cybake migrates bakers to the cloud without the fuss
If you are stuck on old bakery management software but worry about making the jump to a new cloud system, fear not…[read more…]
What’s the ROI on bakery management software?
If you are weighing up whether to adopt a bakery management system to run your business, you’ll want an idea on what your return on investment (ROI) will be…[read more…]
Oprah Davidson is Cybake's ambassador for Northern America. She is a pro baker whose CV includes New York’s Milk Bar chain; the Institute of Culinary Education, New York; and product development for major U.S. bakery brands.
