Why make waste? The baker’s dilemma
Can I increase sales and control waste at the same time? It’s a constant dilemma for all retail bakeries and food to go operators.
The traditional view is that if you increase your sales, an uptick in waste is inevitable.
However, day in, day out, businesses that use Cybake software prove that the opposite is true. Instead of relying on the judgment of their store managers, they stock their stores using automated, sales-based orders suggested by Cybake.
Typically, Cybake’s suggestions cut waste by up to 15% and increase turnover per store by 10%. The system does this by analyzing the historical sales data from their POS tills and/or calculated sales figures.
This improves the availability of high volume, high margin lines and minimizes wastage on lower volume, lower margin items. Decisions about getting the right goods on sale, at the right times, in the right outlets are based on data, rather than human judgment.
In some ways, it is comparable to taking your best store manager and replicating them across all your outlets. The difference is that Cybake is always available and never takes a holiday. Plus, it can calculate how much of every different product line you need in every store and put the results straight into production.
Stores need to have some waste, otherwise they are not maximizing their sales opportunities. It’s a similar situation with their display items, which is why Cybake allows for minimum display quantities (MDQs) within its forecasts.
Other methods
In the absence of data-based decisions, there are, of course, other ways to deal with waste. For example, there are services that cheerfully redistribute the products that your shops have left over at the end of each day.
These are worthy causes, but anecdotal evidence would suggest that bakeries often end up producing extra items just so that they can be given away.
The staff in bakery stores hate to see good food go to waste just as much as anyone else. They therefore see the passing on of unsold items as an eco-friendly act that solves the issue. It doesn’t take long before the handover of these products becomes another routine in their busy working day.
Is it any wonder that extra items – and quality ones at that – get ordered or made in the shop so that the people that come for redistributed items don’t go away empty-handed?
Some store owners may shrug their shoulders at this, writing off such losses as a kind of cut-price promotion. However, such benevolence soon mounts up, especially when multiplied over many stores.
Redistribution may sound like a sustainable solution, and, no doubt, it plays its part. But not making products that would otherwise go to waste is the best way to save the planet.
Data-based decisions therefore present the greenest and most profitable answer to an age-old dilemma for bakers. While your emphasis may always be on increasing sales, it is worth remembering that every dollar or pound saved this way goes straight on your bottom line.
Want to find out more about how sales-based ordering can help your shops control waste and improve sales? Get in touch today!
Rachel Hindle is the Global Sales & Marketing Manager of Cybake.
