Who doesn’t like refreshing their taste and appealing their sweet tooth with some tantalizing sweet dishes? Everyone does, right? This is the very reason why we have seen the proliferation in the number of bakery stores in India. According to the NRAI Indian Food Services Report, the share of bakery and desserts in the foodservice market across different formats is 6%. And this number is likely to grow at a great pace, increasing the number of bakery shops in India. This can also be accounted to the fact that technology has enabled many home bakers to showcase their baking talents and run successful home bakeries. Find out what it takes to open a bakery here. In this article, we bring you bakery business tips that will help you make it a success
Bakery Business Tips That You Should Employ
While managing a bakery business isn’t easy, it is more challenging to do all the things required that will ensure that your bakery business does wonders. Read below to know how you can further run your bakery business better.
1. Have a Clear Finance Sheet
Having proper bakers insurance in place is one way you can keep your ovens hot and cash registers overflowing. The bakeries which plan and prepare for emergencies are the ones that are always prepared and can move on to further expansion. Hence, budget your restaurant operations carefully. Maintain a detailed expense sheet about how much goes into maintenance, buying of raw materials and paying your staff every month. Once you have your total monthly expenditure, then you can calculate your profit margin and invest the extra profit made, back into your bakery business. Your bakery is your dream. Don’t let a potential finance issue turn your dream of running a successful bakery into a nightmare.
2. Diversity Attracts
Bring out innovative bakery items, and it will be a sure thing to attract customers. You can innovate not only with the items but also with the format of your store. For instance, mobile dessert food trucks have become popular in many cities. It is also seen that companies often contract with bakers to provide catering services. Catering for birthdays and anniversaries is a great way to come into the limelight as well.
To capture the crowd that hovers on social media platforms, you should also consider adding an online storefront and selling your baked goodies through the internet.
Having big dreams is always good, but make sure that you dream of the things that you are capable of achieving. Hence, when diversifying, make sure to assess your capabilities, workflow management, and the costs associated with expanding your bakery business. A steady expansion is more sustainable than a rapid rise, and the former is expected to have a more significant impact on the healthy growth of your bakery business. You don’t want to create an unsustainable surge in business and then immediately deflate like a balloon.
3. Having a Website is a Must
To have a legitimate online presence, it is imperative for your bakery business to have its website. An optimized and well-designed website as per the SEO norms will help people searching for bakery products find your bakery easily. Once, your bakery business becomes easily accessible to all your customers, it will automatically help you to boost your sales. Optimizing your website to make it SEO friendly is not an easy task, and hence it is recommended that you get some professional help for this.
4. Create a Social Media Following
Social media is the best way to attract and capture the immense crowd who are hovering on these various platforms. Hence, make sure that you have created business pages on social media and update and optimize them on a regular basis. Post regular photos and videos that will reflect the happenings of your restaurant. You can even receive reviews and feedbacks from these pages that will help you to hone the operations of your bakery business further.
5. Integrate with Online Delivery Platforms
Considering that most of your customers would now like to order food than to go out and dine. Hence, it becomes imperative for your bakery business to allow your customers to order online from your store. So, what you can do is, integrate with Zomato, Swiggy, Foodpanda and UberEat like platforms which will help your products to reach the doorsteps of your customers. Not only should your restaurant be visible on these online delivery platforms, make sure that people can order directly at your restaurant through your restaurant website as well. This will reduce any scope for you on losing your potential clients.
6. Use Technology to Manage Your Bakery Operations
The operations of a bakery business are entirely different from that of a regular restaurant. The production of the baked items and managing the semi-produced and the final baked items can become tedious unless you use a proper Bakery Management System.
Another major challenge of running a bakery business is ensuring a consistent service of fresh baked goods. Of course, there would be times when you would not be able to able to sell off all the items produced in a day, yet which are good enough to be still sold the next day. Keeping track of the items which are fresh and which are stale or expired becomes a task. You can make use of technology to solve this problem. Use an integrated Inventory Management System that allows you to manage the Shelf Life of each item. You can assign the expiration date for each item in the POS that will enable you to sell only the products that are still good to be sold.
7. Network with all the Local Business
Your bakery business must enter into collaborations with all the local businesses in the vicinity. This will help you to increase your sales further. For example, we have seen, that during birthdays people tend to deliver their loved ones cake and flowers as a surprise if they are not in the same city. So, why don’t you collaborate with a local florist and help people order flowers and cakes and get it delivered as a package at the desired place? This will make your bakery business a one-stop point of contact for all those who want to surprise their loved one with some extra indulgence.
8. Try to Stand Out in the Vicinity
Try and bring specific innovation in your bakery business which is not present in your vicinity. This will keep you ahead of your competitors. Consider offering gluten-free options or becoming the only nut-free bakery in your area. If your bakery business is the only one providing a doughnut and coffee combo, then it is a sure thing that you would attract customers. Hence, do market research, try and analyze what are the trends that are yet not exploited to the fullest and then bring about changes accordingly.
9. Offer Free Samples to the Passersby
Hand out samples of your dishes to the walk-in customers and passerby on the street. The customers may be willing to purchase whatever you are sampling if the treats are delicious if they look good and they are available immediately for purchase. Hence, never forget to put a plate of cookies or a few slices of pastries on the counter for the customers.
We hope that after reading this, you have gained a comprehensive knowledge of how to manage your bakery business successfully. Follow these bakery business mentioned earlier tips that will bolster your sales and help you to have an overflowing cash register in your bakery business
I like that you discuss operations of a bakery business, the Bakery Management System, the
production of the baked items and managing the semi-produced and the final baked items, and also tracking of objects using the Inventory Management System. With all these being said, I could say those bakeshop industries grow together with technology.